LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


This  "0-P  Book"  Is  an  Authorized  Reprint  of  the 
Original  Edition,  Produced  by  Microfilm-Xerography  by 
University  Microfilms,  Inc.,  Ann  Arbor,  Michigan,  1966 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 


BY 

ROY  F.  DIBBLE 


NEW    YORK 

LEMCKE  &  BUECHNER 
1921 

LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

PAVIS 


ALBION  W.  TOURG^E 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY 

LEMCKE  &  BUECHNER 


!  ".  .  •  1 


•348671 


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TO  MY  FATHER  AND  MOTHER 


PREFACE 

IN  this  book  I  have  attempted  to  weave  into  a  single 
narrative  the  various  threads  of  interest  in  the  life  of 
Tourgee,  soldier,  carpet-bagger,  politician,  judge,  con 
sul,  lecturer,  editor  and  publisher,  political  writer,  and 
novelist.  The  idea  of  writing  his  biography  would 
quite  certainly  never  have  occurred  to  me  had  I  not 
spent  my  early  years  in  a  cherished  rural  community, 
hardly  centralized  enough  to  be  dignified  even  by  the 
name  of  hamlet,  only  four  miles  from  Thorheim. 
One  of  my  earliest  recollections  is  of  hearing  my 
father  say  what  sounded  to  me  then  like  a  single  word, 
"Judgetorjay,"  which  very  much  aroused  my  childish 
curiosity.  And  while  engaged  in  the  work  of  collect 
ing  material  and  of  writing,  I  have  often  been  cheered 
by  the  thought  that  the  published  results  of  my  re 
searches  might  afford  some  pleasure  to  many  friends 
and  acquaintances  of  mine,  who  knew  Tourgee  not  so 
much  as  a  prominent  novelist  as  a  genially  democratic 
neighbor.  I  can  only  hope  that  the  picture  of  him 
which  I  have  drawn  (in  which  task  I  have  been 
prompted  only  by  the  love  of  impartial,  but  I  trust  not 
unsympathetic,  truth)  will  not  cause  any  of  his  friends 
to  hold  in  less  esteem  the  only  literary  person  of  im 
portance  who  has  added  the  lustre  of  legendary  charm 
to  a  spot  already  graciously  favored  by  nature,  but 
will  rather  enable  them  to  have  a  juster  comprehension 
of  the  reasons  for  their  admiration. 


PREFACE 

Both  the  demand  of  prefatory  conciseness  and  the 
impossibility  of  expressing  in  an  adequate  manner  the 
gratitude  I  feel  toward  many  persons  whose  kindly  in 
terest  has  been  shown  me  in  multitudinous  ways,  some 
what  disconcert  me  at  this  time.  To  Mrs.  Elizabeth 
S.  Warner,  now  mistress  of  Thorheim,  who  placed  all 
of  Tourgee's  private  correspondence,  together  with 
masses  of  unpublished  material,  at  my  disposal,  and 
also  favored  me  with  a  wealth  of  anecdote  and  gener 
ous  hospitality,  I  owe  the  greatest  debt  of  all.  Profes 
sor  Carl  Van  Doren  read  my  manuscript  chapter  by 
chapter  as  it  was  written  and  helped  me  with  much 
penetrating  criticism.  My  thanks  are  also  due  to  Pro 
fessors  W.  P.  Trent,  A.  H.  Thorndike  and  G.  P. 
Krapp,  who  gave  me  the  benefit  of  their  ripened  schol 
arship.  My  colleague,  Doctor  R.  F.  Jones,  read  my 
manuscript  with  painstaking  care.  Professor  Archi 
bald  Henderson,  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina, 
and  Professor  C.  Alphonso  Smith,  of  the  United  States 
Naval  Academy,  put  me  in  touch  with  various  sources 
of  information.  Several  of  Tourgee's  classmates  of 
Rochester  University  and  a  number  of  residents  in 
Greensboro,  North  Carolina,  furnished  me  with  much 
illustrative  material.  The  recent  death  of  Mrs.  Tour- 
gee  prevents  me  from  showing  her  my  appreciation  f or— 
the  record  of  her  husband's  life  which  she  kept  for  so 
many  years — a  record  upon  which  she  would  have 
based  her  own  biography  of  him,  had  not  the  memories 
of  their  past  experiences  aroused  in  her  emotions  so 
poignant  that  she  was  unable  to  put  her  plan  into  exe 
cution. 

ROY  F.  DIBBLE. 

Columbia  University,  May,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 
CHAPTER 

I  BIRTH— EDUCATION— THE  WAR    .... 

II  THE  SOUTH    ...,••••••      3* 

III  "A  FOOL'S  ERRAND"    ...••••      59 

IV  "OUR  CONTINENT"  ...••••• 

V    THORHEIM     ' •     •     •     •      92 

124. 

VI    BORDEAUX 

T72 

VII    CONCLUSION 

TCO 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

INDEX.  1SS 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

CHAPTER  I 
BIRTH— EDUCATION—THE  WAR 

"As  far  as  the  mere  facts  of  my  birth,  residence,  and 
occupation  are  concerned,"  says  Tourgee  in  a  letter 
dated  August,  1894,  to  a  college  president  who  had 
written  him  asking  for  authentic  biographical  infor 
mation,  "they  are,  I  suppose,  easily  accessible  to  any 
one.  Beyond  that,  I  do  not  know  that  any  account  of 
my  life  or  thoughts  has  ever  been  written.  I  have 
avoided  with  some  persistence  both  biography  and  auto 
biography.  None  except  of  my  own  household  has 
ever  come  near  enough  to  me  for  the  former  and  I 
have  small  inclination  for  the  latter." 

The  above  statement  must  be  taken  with  the  classic 
grain  of  salt,  however ;  for  though  it  is  in  the  main  cor 
rect,  its  author  did  begin  an  account  of  his  life  which, 
as  he  noted  on  the  margin  of  the  manuscript,  was  in 
tended  for  use  as  the  basis  of  a  biography  to  be  written 
by  one  of  his  closest  friends.  He  also  left  several  other 
autobiographical  accounts  of  certain  periods  of  his 
life,  and  from  them  many  of  the  facts  in  this  biography 
have  been  taken. 

ii 


12  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

The  Tourgee  family,  of  Huguenot  origin,  left 
France  in  1685,  following  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict 
of  Nantes.  After  stopping  for  a  brief  period  on  the  Is 
land  of  Guernsey,  its  members  decided  to  break  the  last 
chain  that  held  them  to  the  Old  World,  and  accord 
ingly  settled  in  Kingston,  Rhode  Island,  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The  first  Tourgee 
whose  name  is  left  on  record  was  Peter,  who  supported 
himself  and  family  in  this  part  of  the  New  World  by 
peg  and  awl.  At  some  indefinite  period  in  the  early 
eighteenth  century  the  family  again  moved,  this  time 
to  Framingham,  Massachusetts,  and  there  the  future 
author's  grandfather,  Valentine  Tourgee,  married  Re- 
becka  Robbins,  whose  family  had  come  from  New 
London,  Connecticut,  after  experiencing  the  siege  of 
that  town  by  the  traitor  Benedict  Arnold.  To  this 
couple  was  born  Valentine  Jr.,  father  of  Albion  W. 
Tourgee,  in  1814.  During  his  early  manhood  Valen 
tine  the  second  moved  to  Lee,  Berkshire  County,  Mass 
achusetts,  and  there  met  Louisa  Emma  Winegar,  who 
was  a  descendant  of  Edward  Doty,  one  of  the  famous 
colony  that  came  over  on  the  Mayflower.  The  Wine- 
gar  family  was  of  German  origin,  and  the  first  one 
whose  name  is  known,  Ulric  Winegar,  born  in  Switzer 
land  in  1648,  came  to  America  in  1710  with  the  colony 
of  Palatines  which  was  under  the  fostering  care  of 
Queen  Anne.  Ulric  settled  in  Ulster  County,  New 
York,  and  at  some  later  date  moved  to  Lee,  where,  as 
has  been  noted,  Valentine  Tourgee  Jr.  had  likewise 
come.  Jacob  Winegar,  maternal  grandfather  of  Al 
bion  W.  Tourgee,  had  a  family  of  seven  children ;  one, 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  13 

Jack,  was  a  member  of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature, 
and  another,  Jacob  Jr.,  was  apparently  a  happy-go- 
lucky  chap,  which  may  account  for  the  fact  that  his 
youthful  nephew,  Albion,  came  to  him  in  the  forties, 
for  the  comforts  of  home  which  his  carping  step 
mother  denied  him. 

It  was  at  Lee,  Massachusetts,  then,  that  the  author's 
parents  met.  His  father  was  here  engaged  in  the 
manufacture  of  paper.  In  1836  he  married  Louisa 
Emma  Winegar,  his  brother  Cyrus  and  one  of  Louisa's 
four  sisters  also  marrying  at  the  same  time.  Appar 
ently  the  nomadic  instincts  which  had  characterized 
both  families  were  inherited  by  these  descendants,  for 
both  couples  soon  after  the  joint  marriage  removed  to 
Williamsfield,  Ashtabula  County,  Ohio,  where  Valen 
tine  and  Louisa  Tourgee  settled  on  a  farm.  And  here, 
on  May  2,  1838,  was  born  their  first  child,  Albion 
Winegar  Tourgee.  Two  other  children  were  born  to 
them,  but  both  died  in  infancy.  The  author's  mother, 
never  strong,  gradually  wasted  away  and  finally  died 
of  tuberculosis  in  February,  1843.  All  that  he  was 
ever  able  to  recall  of  his  mother  was  that  she  used  to 
whip  him  gently  because  he  "toed  in,"  and  that  her 
funeral  took  place  on  a  bleak  winter's  day. 

The  bereaved  husband  and  father  bore  this  calamity 
bravely  and  for  several  years  remained  alone  with  his 
baby  son.  He  finally  decided  to  tempt  fate,  however, 
by  procuring  a  foster  mother  for  his  child,  and  accord 
ingly  took  a  second  spouse,  Rowena  Snow,  some  time 
between  1844  and  1846,  to  which  union  there  was  born 
a  daughter  about  ten  years  Albion's  junior.  In  1847 


14  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

a  final  removal  was  made  to  a  farm  one  and  a  half 
miles  north  of  Kingsville,  Ohio,  and  here  the  father, 
who  had  seen  his  son  grow  famous,  died  April  26, 
1889.  Meanwhile  fate,  having  been  tempted,  was 
proving  capricious  as  usual,  for  the  boy's  legal  mother 
was  showing  herself  true  to  the  well-fixed  tradition  of 
her  species.1  The  result  was  that  the  high-spirited  lad, 
who,  by  the  time  he  was  fourteen,  was  already  begin 
ning  to  show  that  uncompromising  independence  which 
later  became  one  of  the  most  pronounced  characteris 
tics  of  the  grown  man,  decided  to  sever  connections 
with  his  home  and  go  for  protection  and  solace  to  his 
uncle,  Jacob  Winegar  Jr.,  in  Lee,  Massachusetts.  How 
he  obtained  the  funds  for  this  youthful  adventure  is 
not  known,  but  obtain  them  he  did  and  stayed  in  his 
new  home  apparently  for  some  two  years.  The  facts 
about  this  period  of  his  life  are  very  meagre  indeed, 
but  probably  he  was  pleased  with  the  Rip  Van  Winkle 
propensities  of  his  uncle;  for  in  one  of  his  autobio 
graphical  fragments  Tourgee  boasts  that  as  a  boy  he 
could  never  be  relied  on  to  perform  the  farm  chores 
which  his  father  assigned  him,  but  that  he  usually  stole 
the  paternal  rifle  and  hied  him  to  the  woods  to  return 
just  when  he  pleased.  It  is  only  fair  to  state,  how 
ever,  that  the  chief  element  of  interest  in  the  prodigal's 

'This  characterization  of  Tourgee's  step-mother  is  based 
wholly  upon  his  own  statement  about  her.  A  lady  who  knew 
Rowena  Snow  Tourgee  intimately  has  assured  me,  however, 
that  she  was  in  reality  a  "mild,  even-tempered  woman,  who  al 
ways  spoke  very  quietly."  Tourgee  probably  magnified  what 
ever  faults  his  step-mother  may  have  had,  in  accordance  with 
his  usual  practice  of  exaggerating  the  hardships  of  his  career. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  15 

return  was  an  irate  parent  "armed  with  retributory 
cudgel."  The  use  of  the  rod  was  of  course  firmly  be 
lieved  in,  because  the  lad's  father  was  a  very  strict 
Methodist,  whose  enormously  long  supplications  in  the 
weekly  prayer  meetings  could,  according  to  tradition, 
be  heard  far  beyond  the  walls  of  the  church  itself. 
The  Methodistic  element  in  the  father's  character  also 
showed  itself  in  his  love  of  argument,  which  was  in 
turn  inherited  by  his  son.  Often  the  two  would,  in 
the  midst  of  a  tempestuous  debate,  seat  themselves  at 
the  table,  when,  of  course,  it  was  necessary  to  pause 
briefly  for  the  saying  of  grace;  and  once  this  per 
functory  task  had  been  performed  as  speedily  as  pos 
sible,  the  verbal  combat  would  be  renewed  with  greater 
violence  than  ever. 

But,  though  he  loved  rod  and  gun  with  all  the  fervor 
of  youth,  the  boy  loved  books  as  well,  and  it  was  at  the 
library  in  Lee  that  his  first  real  opportunity  for  exten 
sive  reading  came.  His  father  had  once  intended  to 
prepare  for  a  profession  and  had  bought  many  books 
with  this  end  in  view.  But  financial  loss,  and  more 
particularly  a  strong  religious  awakening,  had  turned 
his  mind  from  such  worldly  pursuits  as  the  mastering 
of  professions,  and  also  the  making  of  verse,  in  which 
he  had  occasionally  indulged;  hence  it  was  that  re 
ligious  zeal  prompted  him  to  commit  to  the  flames  such 
impious  performances  as  Scott's  novels  and  other 
works  of  a  like  nature.  The  following  volumes  had 
been  preserved,  however,  for  their  indubitable  moral 
qualities,  and  had  been  read  by  Albion  in  lieu  of  more 
exciting  material:  the  Bible,  Goodrich's  "Universal 


16  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

History,"  a  "History  of  the  United  States,"  "Pil 
grim's  Progress,"  Bacon's  "Essays,"  "Paradise  Lost," 
"Night  Thoughts,"  D'Aubigne's  "History  of  the  Ref 
ormation,"  other  historical  works,  a  book  of  fables, 
the  ubiquitous  "Scottish  Chiefs,"  and  some  volumes  of 
religious  biography.  The  boy  was  compelled  to  mem 
orize  parts  of  "Paradise  Lost,"  "Night  Thoughts," 
and  the  Bible  for  his  soul's  good  and  incidentally  as  a 
punishment  for  childish  offences.  He  liked  the  Gospel 
of  St.  John,  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  and  the  Revela 
tions  especially  well,  and  once  said  that  he  could  have 
restored  all  three  of  these  had  all  copies  been  lost;  but 
it  may  justly  be  surmised  that  he  was  here  emulating  a 
commonly  known  statement  of  Macaulay,  rather  than 
telling  the  facts  of  the  case.  This,  then,  had  consti 
tuted  his  intellectual  pabulum  till  the  good  New  Eng-» 
land  library  opened  his  eyes  to  a  much  more  extensive 
literary  field;  and  from  this  time  till  the  call  to  arms 
came,  he  literally  reveled  in  English  literature,  while  it 
is  significant  that  he  was  particularly  interested  in  his 
tory  and  the  background  of  fiction — the  life  and  so 
ciety  of  the  times  portrayed. 

At  some  indefinite  period,  probably  in  1854,  he  re 
turned  to  his  father's  farm;  for,  being  now  nearly 
full-grown,  he  had  little  cause  to  fear  the  weight  of  his 
father's  arm  and  still  less  his  step-mother's  tongue. 
He  was  somewhat  undersized  for  his  age  at  this  time, 
but  very  tough  and  wiry.  Here  he  remained,  alter 
nately  teaching  in  some  elementary  school  and  study 
ing  at  Kingsville  Academy,  whither  he  daily  trudged 
from  the  home  farm  until  he  entered  the  University  of 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  17 

Rochester  in  1859.  This  academy  had  as  its  principal 
Chester  W.  Heywood,  a  young  man  fresh  from  col 
lege,  to  whom  Tourgee  became  warmly  attached  and 
to  whom  he  always  gave  precedence  later  when  speak 
ing  of  the  formative  influences  of  his  early  life.  Hey 
wood  freely  opened  his  quite  extensive  library  to  the 
boy,  and  thus  further  literary  treasures  were  revealed 
to  him.  Particularly,  at  this  time,  he  read  the  Waver- 
ley  novels,  taking  one  home  every  other  day  till  he  had 
finished  the  set.  Meanwhile,  "Al,"  as  he  was  familiarly 
called,  was  rapidly  winning  first  place  as  a  scholar,  de 
spite  the  fact  that  the  standard  of  attainment  at  the 
academy  was  high,  since  attendance  was  voluntary  and 
most  of  the  students  were  paying  their  own  way.  He 
was  regarded  by  his  fellow  students  as  destined  for  a 
brilliant  career  because  of  his  general  scholastic  ability, 
especially  in  languages.  It  was  at  this  time  that  he 
formed  the  determination  to  follow  the  legal  profes 
sion. 

During  his  academy  days,  the  future  novelist  had 
already  begun  to  exercise  his  'prentice  pen  in  a  very 
'prentice  manner  indeed.  A  manuscript  book  of  his, 
dated  March,  1857,  and  entitled  "Sense  and  Non 
sense,"  contains  these  first  endeavors,  and  it  is  per 
haps  no  more  than  charitable  to  remark  that  the  non 
sense  is  far  more  in  evidence  that  any  glimmerings  of 
sense.  There  are  about  forty  "poems,"  some  based 
upon  classical  subjects  and  written  in  a  very  weak 
Byronic  style;  in  fact,  two  are  addressed  to  that 
poet  so  often  imitated  by  aspiring  youths.  Apparently 
some  of  these  verses  sought  immortality  by  being 


i8  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

printed  in  the  academy  paper.  But  by  far  the  larger 
part  of  these  rhymed  lines  bear  the  title  To  Emma, 
and  since  she  will  appear  very  frequently  in  the  pages 
that  follow,  it  may  be  well  to  know  something  about 
her  now. 

The  young  lady  thus  poetically  eulogized  was  Emma 
Lodoiska  Kilbourne,  the  daughter  of  Harmon  and 
Mary  Corwin  Kilbourne,  and  she  was  likewise  a  stu 
dent  at  Kingsville  Academy.  Both  the  Kilbourne  and 
Corwin  families  were  descended  from  Yorkshire  gen 
try,  and  had  come  to  New  England  before  1635.  Some 
of  their  descendants  had  intermarried  with  the  Win- 
throps  of  Massachusetts,  and  as  a  result  Emma  Kil 
bourne  was  a  lineal  descendant  of  both  governors  of 
that  name.  The  Kilbournes  settled  in  Bristol,  Ver 
mont;  and  after  the  Revolutionary  War,  since  they 
were  suspected  of  being  too  fond  of  the  Tories  to  be 
comfortable  in  New  England,  they  emigrated  to  Can 
ada,  whence  at  some  later  time  they  removed  to  Con- 
neaut,  Ohio.  At  this  place  it  was  that  Emma  lived, 
and  whence  she  was  sent  to  the  academy.  It  was  a 
case  of  love  at  first  sight,  on  Tourgee's  part  at  least; 
for  when  he  first  saw  her,  he  confidentially  remarked  to 
a  friend,  "I'm  going  to  marry  that  girl,"  and  after  an 
engagement  of  five  years  he  did  so.  The  remark  he 
made  to  her  on  his  death  bed,  "Emma,  you  have  been 
the  one  perfect  wife,"  was  but  little  exaggerated,  as 
succeeding  events  will  show. 

After  ending  his  academy  days,  Tourgee  probably 
taught  school  a  little  while,  and  then,  from  the  autumn 
of  1859  till  January,  1861,  he  was  a  student  at  the  Uni- 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  19 

versity  of  Rochester.  Just  before  entering  this  insti 
tution,  he  made  another  trip  to  Lee,  Massachusetts,  to 
receive  his  share  of  his  grandfather's  property;  the 
amount  of  his  share  is  unknown,  but  it  certainly  was 
not  large,  for  he  paid  his  own  way  through  college. 
Had  he  chosen  to  do  so,  he  might  have  had  his  college 
expenses  paid  by  another ;  for  during  his  boyhood  stay 
in  Lee,  a  gentleman  there  had  been  so  impressed  by 
Tourgee's  youthful  promise  that  he  later  offered  to 
send  him  to  Williams  College.  But,  independent  as 
usual,  Tourgee  refused  this  kind  offer  and  went  to 
Rochester,  where  he  received  sophomore  rating, 
doubtless  because  of  his  good  record  at  the  academy. 

Here  he  made  no  special  effort  to  attain  high  scholas 
tic  standing,  but  largely  followed  his  own  sweet  will. 
His  course  was  very  erratic;  what  he  read,  he  read 
with  all  his  might,  but  in  the  subjects  that  interested 
him  least,  he  did  just  enough  work  to  maintain  his 
standing  in  class.  He  read  poetry  enormously,  but 
mathematics  was  his  special  aversion.  One  day  his 
mathematics  teacher  reprimanded  him  for  a  poor  reci 
tation,  whereupon  with  tears  in  his  eyes  he  blurted  out : 
"Professor !  I  like  you  personally  better  than  any  man 
on  the  faculty,  but  I  don't  like  mathematics  and  I  won't 
study  them  if  I  have  to  leave  college."  He  read  all  of 
Shakspere  and,  if  we  can  believe  his  word,  all  the 
pre-Shaksperean  dramatists,  to  see  how 'great  their 
influence  on  the  master  dramatist  had  been.  He  had 
a  habit  of  marking  the  books  in  the  college  library  with 
his  own  pen,  but  this  peccadillo  was  not  discovered  un 
til  he  had  become  so  famous  that  the  books  thus  marked 


20  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

gained  added  value  in  the  eyes  of  the  college  authorities 
by  reason  of  these  disfigurements.  He  was  fond  of 
debating  in  his  college  days,  and  has  left  in  manu 
script  some  specimens  of  his  speeches,  which  are 
couched  in  the  usual  terms  of  forensic  finality  that  one 
ordinarily  finds  in  the  philippics  of  a  budding  orator. 
A  manuscript  book  containing  notes  on  a  college  course 
in  logic  has  also  about  a  dozen  more  poems,  several  of 
them  having  war  as  their  theme,  which  uniformly 
maintain  the  high  standard  of  inferiority  that  had 
characterized  those  written  in  his  academy  days.  This 
same  manuscript  book  contains  also  some  fragments  of 
short  stories.  More  significant  than  any  of  these  in 
terests  were  his  friendships  with  the  students,  and  par 
ticularly  with  President  M.  B.  Anderson,  who  was 
Tourgee's  life-long  friend  and  counselor. 

As  soon  as  the  first  mutterings  of  the  fast  approach^ 
ing  war  were  heard,  Tourgee  began  to  show  that  love 
of  leadership  which  was  always  one  of  his  strong 
traits  by  organizing  a  number  of  students  and  drilling 
them.  He  amply  proved  his  mastery  one  day,  when 
one  of  the  members  of  his  "company,"  a  close  friend 
of  his,  did  something  which  displeased  him.  In  a  very- 
short  space  of  time,  the  friend  was  on  the  ground  with 
the  self-appointed  officer  on  top,  pummelling  him  un 
mercifully.  Apparently  his  funds  were  running  low 
at  this  time,  for  in  January,  1861,  he  left  the  University 
and  became  associate  principal  of  a  school  at  Wilson, 
Niagara  County,  New  York.  He  doubtless  intended 
to  return  to  his  collegiate  work  at  some  future  time, 
but  it  was  not  to  be.  The  degree  of  A.B.  was  granted 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  21 

to  him  by  the  University  in  June,  1862,  however,  in 
accordance  with  the  common  practice  of  awarding  de 
grees  to  students  who  had  entered  the  service  of  their 
country  before  their  academic  careers  were  quite  com 
pleted.  Years  later,  in  1880  to  be  exact,  Rochester 
University  awarded  him  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D., 
and  three  years  later  the  University  of  Copenhagen 
made  him  a  Doctor  of  Philosophy.  Tourgee  remained 
at  the  school  in  Wilson  until  the  nineteenth  of  April, 
1 86 1,  on  which  date  he  enlisted  in  the  27th  New  York 
Volunteers. 

He  had  not  long  to  wait  before  suffering  for  the 
cause  of  the  Union.  In  the  first  Battle  of  Bull  Run,  on 
July  4,  1861,  he  lost  the  sight  of  his  left  eye  *  and  also 
received  a  bad  wound  in  his  spine.  The  eye  was  later 
removed  and  a  glass  one  put  in  its  place,  which  so 
closely  resembled  the  natural  one  that  many  people 
who  knew  him  fairly  well  never  suspected  that  his  left 
eye  was  artificial.  But  the  wound  to  the  spine  was  a 
different  matter.  During  the  whole  of  his  life  he  never 
fully  recovered  from  it,  for  it  caused  a  permanent 
nervousness  and  often  excruciating  pain ;  consequently, 
he  never  saw  a  really  well  day  after  that  eventful 
fourth  of  July. 

1  Tourgee  stated  again  and  again  in  his  writings  that  his  left 
eye  was  lost  in  this  battle;  but  some  of  his  intimate  friends, 
whose  word  is  unimpeachable,  have  assured  me  that  in  reality 
he  had  already  lost  the  sight  of  this  eye  by  an  accident  in  his 
boyhood.  It  seems  plain  that  in  this  case,  as  in  several  others, 
Tourgee  was  so  enthralled  by  his  ultra-romantic  theory  of  life, 
which  colored  all  he  did  and  wrote,  that  he  applied  it  to  one 
of  the  rather  drab  facts  of  his  actual  career. 


22  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

For  three  days  after  this  tragic  event  Tourgee  was 
in  a  state  of  coma,  and  when  he  returned  to  conscious 
ness  it  was  to  find  himself  in  Washington  with  a  nurse 
at  his  side.  The  roar  of  battle  was  still  in  his  ears, 
and  for  several  weeks  he  lived  over,  in  his  dilirium, 
the  ghastly  events  of  that  momentous  day.  The  sur 
geon  in  attendance  looked  for  nothing  for  him  save  a 
slow  lingering  until  death  should  mercifully  come. 
But  instead  he  began  gradually  to  mend,  though  it 
was  eleven  months  before  he  could  walk  without  the 
aid  of  crutches.  By  August,  1861,  he  had  recovered 
sufficient  vitality  to  become  somewhat  entranced  by  a 
Washington  belle,  a  guest  at  the  house  where  he  was 
invalided;  but  as  soon  as  he  saw  Miss  Kilbourne  once 
more,  to  whom  he  had  been  engaged  for  three  years, 
his  old  love  returned  stronger  than  ever.  In  this 
month,  having  received  his  honorable  discharge  from 
the  army,  he  was  sent  to  Ashtabula,  Ohio,  lying  on  the 
floor  of  the  train  that  carried  him,  for  his  back  was  too 
weak  to  permit  his  sitting  up.  Having  arrived  at  Ash- 
tabula,  he  lay  on  his  couch  and  read  Blackstone  every 
day,  until,  by  January,  1862,  he  was  able  to  hobble  on 
crutches  down  to  the  law  office  of  Sherman  &  Farmer, 
Ashtabula,  where  he  studied  law  till  the  following  July. 

But  what  of  his  literary  work  during  this  period? 
The  answer  is  that  it  saw  the  publication  of  his  first 
book,  and  the  circumstances  of  this  event  are  of  suffi 
cient  interest  to  warrant  narration.  Before  this  story 
is  told,  however,  it  should  be  noted  that,  when  Tourgee 
started  for  war,  he  had  in  his  knapsack  two  volumes,  a 
Greek  Testament  and  Cicero's  "De  Natura  Deorum." 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  23 

The  Testament  was  included  not  because  of  any  partic 
ular  religious  motive,  but  simply  because  he  wished  to 
continue  the  study  of  Greek.  But  he  took  the  other 
book  because  he  really  liked  to  read  it  (he  always  ex 
celled  in  Latin),  having  already  read  it  more  than 
once.  During  his  army  life  he  read  both  these  books 
several  times,  and  the  Testament  was  especially  wel 
come  to  his  closest  friend  in  the  army,  a  theological 
student.  Tourgee  also  read  during  his  first  army  ex 
perience  parts  of  the  "Comedie  Humaine"  in  the  or 
iginal. 

At  the  time  when  he  began  as  a  cripple  to  study  law, 
Tourgee  had  already  written  a  few  stories  which  had 
appeared  in  some  cheap  periodicals  long  since  gone  into 
the  limbo  of  oblivion,  and  he  had  even  received  a  little 
pay  for  some  of  them ;  but  so  far  he  had  no  thought  of 
literature  as  a  serious  occupation.  Now,  however,  with 
the  prospect  of  being  a  permanent  invalid,  possibly 
always  confined  to  a  couch,  the  thought  of  writing 
came  to  him,  and  he  was  materially  assisted  in  this 
direction  by  the  advice  of  President  Anderson  of 
Rochester  and  of  the  Professor  of  Greek  in  that  in 
stitution.  Acting  upon  their  advice,  he  made  the 
synopsis  and  indeed  wrote  several  chapters  of  a  novel; 
but  he  finally  decided  instead  to  publish  a  volume  of 
poems,  most  of  which  had  already  been  written.  One 
more,  however,  he  was  prompted  to  write,  and  it  is 
worthy  of  remark  that  it  was  concerned  with  the  con 
ditions  attending  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War.  At 
this  lengthy  poem  he  labored  until  its  completion  in 
January,  1862.  Then,  as  soon  as  he  was  able,  he 


24  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

journeyed  to  a  neighboring  city  to  seek  a  publisher. 
He  found  one  who  was  willing  to  execute  his  wishes, 
provided  that  he  would  assume  the  cost  of  the  job. 
Tourgee  assented,  thinking  that  he  could  pay  for  it 
with  the  money  from  the  pension  that  had  just  been 
granted  him,  a  pension  which  he  renounced  upon 
patriotic  motives  when  he  re-entered  the  service.  But 
the  book,  published  under  an  assumed  name,  cost  all 
the  pension  money  and  a  little  more.  When  he  received 
the  first  two  copies  sent  him  by  the  publisher,  he  was 
so  disappointed  at  the  immaturity  which,  hidden  in 
the  hypnotizing  manuscript,  the  printed  pages  revealed, 
that  he  thrust  them  with  small  delay  into  the  kitchen 
stove.  This  incineration  was  also  determined  upon 
partly  because  of  the  advice  of  his  father,  to  whom 
he  had  shown  the  volumes  in  hope  of  winning  some 
paternal  praise.  Late  in  the  summer  of  1862,  he  went 
to  the  publisher  for  a  report  and  found  that  of  the 
one  hundred  copies  printed  twenty  had  been  sold.  He 
had  not  at  any  time  really  expected  that  the  sale  of 
the  book  would  entirely  pay  for  the  expenses  of  pub 
lication;  but  by  this  time  no  illusion  whatever,  either 
literary  or  financial,  remained;  and  accordingly  he 
sought  and  obtained  permission  from  the  publisher  to 
cut  the  unsold  copies  into  bits,  which  he  did,  not,  how 
ever,  without  some  pangs  of  regret.  Nevertheless,  he 
had  now  tasted  both  the  sweets  and  pains  of  author 
ship  ;  and,  while  it  was  easy  to  destroy  this  first  product 
of  his  enthusiasm  for  literature,  the  enthusiasm  itself 
remained,  dormant  for  some  years,  to  be  sure,  by  rea- 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  25 

son  of  war,  bad  health,  and  the  necessity  of  earning  a 
living,  but  still  it  remained. 

Meanwhile  sterner  events  were  again  claiming 
Tourgee's  active  interest.  During  the  spring  of  1862, 
he  took  a  preparation  containing  strychnia  and  there 
upon  began  to  recover  the  use  of  his  limbs.  While 
still  an  invalid,  he  attended  meetings  for  the  recruit 
ing  of  volunteers  and  even  spoke  for  their  cause,  seated 
in  a  chair.  By  July  he  was  again  well  enough  to  serve 
his  country,  and  accordingly  went  to  Columbus  and 
got  a  commission  as  first  lieutenant  in  Company  G  of 
the  iO5th  Ohio  Volunteers,  many  of  whose  members 
were  his  old  academy  schoolmates.  Over  thirty  years 
later,  in  "The  Story  of  a  Thousand/'  he  performed  a 
labor  of  love  by  giving  a  minute  account  of  this  com 
pany.  Unfortunately  for  his  biographer,  he,  as  the 
preface  states,  "endeavored  to  restrict  personal  incident 
almost  entirely  to  illustrative  events  common  to  the 
experience  of  all" ;  hence  it  was  that  he  did  not  describe 
his  own  experiences  in  prison  because  they  were  too 
personal  "to  be  compatible  with  the  general  tone  of 
the  work."  From  July  till  October  the  company  was 
engaged  in  minor  war  activities  in  Kentucky.  At  the 
Battle  of  Perryville,  October  8,  1862,  however,  it  lost 
about  one-third  of  its  total  strength,  and  Tourgee  again 
suffered  an  injury  to  his  spine  which  kept  him  in  a 
hospital  at  Danville,  Kentucky,  through  October  and 
November.  He  rejoined  his  company  about  the  first 
of  December  and  for  the  next  month  spent  his  time  in 
helping  to  chase  the  raider  Morgan. 

It  was  during  this  time  that  an  event  of  special 


26  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

interest  occurred,  best  told  in  Tourgee's  own  words. 
"I  remember  that  as  late  as  September  1862,  I  was 
myself  put  under  arrest  in  the  army  of  the  United 
States,  for  refusing  to  surrender  a  colored  man  who 
had  saved  my  company."1  This  brief  utterance,  con 
cerning  a  fact  of  which  nothing  else  is  known,  is  the 
first  evidence  of  that  consuming  passion  which  later 
influenced  nearly  everything  Tourgee  did  and  wrote— 
an  untiring  sympathy,  admiration,  even  love,  for  the 
negro  in  his  servile  state,  and  a  zeal  which  was  never 
quenched  for  obtaining  justice  (at  least  Tourgee's  con 
ception  of  justice)  for  the  black  man. 

At  some  time  in  January,  1863,  another  event  took 
place  of  which  little  but  the  bare  statement  of  fact  is 
known.  On  one  of  the  Morgan  expeditions  referred 
to,  Tourgee  was  captured  at  Murf reesboro,  Tennessee, 
and  spent  the  following  four  months  in  prison.  He  has 
left  little  record  of  this  decidedly  unpleasant  episode 
in  his  life,  but  it  is  certain  that,  in  what  order  is  un 
known,  the  several  walls  of  the  prisons  at  Atlanta, 
Milan,  Salisbury,  and  those  of  the  notorious  Libby, 
encased  him.  He  later  referred  to  this  experience  as 
follows:  "Despite  the  temptation,  he  [Tourgee]  has 
rarely  alluded  to  the  fact  that  he  was  a  guest  of  'Libby' 
and  sundry  other  hotels  of  that  type — only  more  so — 
at  the  South,  in  public  speech  or  writing.  .  .  .  Of 
the  treatment  they  received,  the  lack  of  supplies,  the 
crowded  condition  of  the  prisons,  the  lack  of  shelter, 
the  inexpressible  foulness  of  some  of  them,  and  the 

1  The  Chautauquan,  Nov.  1881,  p.  93. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  27 

indifference  manifested  toward  their  feelings,  he  has 
said  nothing  lest  his  purpose  should  be  misconceived."  * 
Decidedly  uncomfortable  as  these  experiences  were, 
their  irksome  monotony  must  have  been  slightly 
mitigated  by  at  least  three  changes  of  air  and 
"scenery."  In  later  years  he  once  remarked  to  a  friend, 
apropos  of  this  experience:  "I  ran  away  once  or 
twice  and  was  shot  at,  caught  and  penned  up  again. 
Oh,  I  had  quite  a  variety."  He  put  some  part  of  his 
life  in  prison  to  good  account  by  the  study  of  Spanish 
and  the  attendant  reading  of  Cervantes' s  immortal  tale 
in  the  original,  together  with  Carlyle's  "French 
Revolution,"  which  was  "one  of  the  few  books  that 
found  their  way  into  the  room  in  Libby  Prison  of 
which  the  Bystander  was  at  one  time  joint-tenant  with 
many  others."  2  But  in  the  first  part  of  May,  1863, 
he  was  exchanged  from  prison,  and  so  freed  from 
one  of  the  most  disagreeable  misfortunes  that  can 
happen  to  a  soldier. 

That  he  wasted  little  time  in  returning  home  and 
becoming  partner  in  an  event  which  he  and  another 
person  had  longingly  anticipated  for  five  years,  is 
sufficiently  evinced  by  the  following  passage  taken 
from  his  war  diary,  which  covers  the  period  from  May 
till  November,  1863,  and  which  has  fortunately  been 
preserved:  "May  14,  1863.  Married  at  Columbus, 
Ohio,  by  the  Rev.  Julius  E.  Gardner  at  the  Med.  Coll. 
buildings.  Returned  to  our  lodgings  in  the  W.  S.  Hotel 

1  "A  Bystander's  Notes,"  in  The  Chicago  Inter  Ocean,  Feb.  13, 
1890. 
*Ibid.t  June  26,  1891. 


28  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

to  take  life  quietly  and  happily.  It  ought  to  be  happy, 
for  it  is  the  consummation  of  five  years  of  pleasant 
waiting  and  sweet  expectation."  But  unfortunately 
the  quiet  and  happiy  life  was  not  destined  to  last  long 
at  that  particular  time,  for  the  diary  on  May  25  con 
tains  this  terse  sentence:  "To-day  I  left  for  the  war 
again." 

Practically  the  only  source  of  information  about 
Tourgee's  life  during  the  remainder  of  this  year  is 
this  same  war  diary,  together  with  some  passages  in 
'The  Story  of  a  Thousand."  There  is  little  of  worth 
in  this  much  battered  diary  except  as  it  contains 
biographical  information,  for  its  contents  are  merely 
typical  of  most  personal  records  of  this  kind.  It  is 
filled  with  grumblings  at  army  life  and  its  privations 
on  the  one  hand,  and  fervidly  patriotic  sentiments  on 
the  other,  complaints  of  the  scarcity  of  letters,  and 
particularly  many  devout  expressions  of  love  for  his 
wife  and  supplications  to  the  Almighty  that  he  may 
be  spared  to  return  to  her  in  safety.  Much  of  it  was 
written  in  the  blackness  of  night  as  its  sprawling,  at 
times  illegible,  lines  show,  not  a  little  during  pauses 
between  battles,  and  some  even  while  he  was  directly 
under  fire.  The  following  passage  is  characteristic: 
"July  5.  We  got  a  mail  today  but  nothing  for  me. 
Well  no  wonder  for  Emma  has  gone  on  a  spree  and 
cannot  stop  to  write  to  me.  I  do  hope  the  darling  is 
happy." 

"The  Story  of  a  Thousand"  gives  a  much  clearer 
idea  of  the  army  activities  in  which  Tourgee  took  part 
during  this  time  than  does  the  diary.  From  this  his- 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  29 

tory  it  is  apparent  that  the  io5th  Ohio  Volunteers  was 
engaged  in  several  battles.  During  the  latter  part  of 
June,  this  regiment  was  among  those  which  saw  action 
in  the  campaign  against  the  Confederate  position  at 
Tullahoma,  which  was  taken  July  I.  It  also  assisted 
in  the  Battle  of  Chickamauga  and  in  the  campaign 
against  Chattanooga.  Moreover,  it  saw  service  in  the 
victorious  battles  of  Lookout  Mountain  and  Missionary 
Ridge.  Its  subsequent  participation  in  the  march 
"from  Atlanta  to  the  sea"  was  not,  however,  shared  by 
Tourgee,  as  will  shortly  appear. 

It  has  been  noted  that  Tourgee  had  already  been 
under  arrest  in  1862,  and  his  second  experience  of  the 
kind  came  in  June,  1863.  The  diary  states  that  during 
this  month  he  was  in  prison  two  weeks  because,  while 
on  picket  duty,  he  had  pricked  with  his  sword  a  soldier 
who  had  tried  to  get  through  the  lines,  and  was  ac 
cordingly  accused  of  wounding  him.  After  being  in 
carcerated  two  weeks,  Tourgee  was  released  from 
prison,  but  the  charge  against  him  was  not  finally  dis 
posed  of  until  several  weeks  later.  He  was  sentenced 
to  be  formally  reprimanded  by  his  superior  officer;  but 
that  the  reprimand  was  only  a  form  is  evident  from 
the  language  in  which,  according  to  the  diary,  it  was 
couched :  "Lieutenant  Tourgee,  I  have  nothing  to  say. 
You  will  report  for  duty  tomorrow  morning." 

To  take  commands  from  another  was  the  one  thing 
that  galled  Tourgee  perhaps  more  than  anything  else. 
On  June  2  he  tendered  his  resignation  as  first  lieutenant 
because  his  "rights  were  not  respected  and  his  reputa 
tion  threatened,"  but  it  was  not  accepted.  It  was  doubt> 


30  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

less  this  independence  of  spirit,  combined  with  his 
interest  in  the  negro  which  had  already  manifested 
itself,  that  led  him  during  the  following  summer  to 
meditate  withdrawal  from  his  regiment  and  the  for 
mation  of  a  negro  company,  to  be  officered  of  course 
by  himself.  And  it  was  probably  because  of  this  same 
independence,  together  with  the  fact  that  his  old 
wound  (which  had  already  troubled  him  much  of  the 
time)  was  aggravated  when  he  leapt  a  ditch  in  October, 
that  he  applied  for  leave  of  absence.  This  he  ap 
parently  obtained  about  the  tenth  of  November,  for 
his  diary  closes  on  that  date,  while  he  was  waiting  for 
his  leave  of  absence  and  feeling  very  wretched  on  ac 
count  of  his  wound.  In  December  he  again  tendered 
his  resignation  because  of  insolence  (at  least  he  called 
it  such)  on  the  part  of  his  superiors,  which  was  once 
more  not  accepted.  Whether  it  was  finally  accepted 
because  of  this  friction  or  because  of  his  state  of 
health  is  not  definitely  known ;  at  any  rate,  on  about 
January  i,  1864,  he  withdrew  from  the  army.  The 
fact  probably  is  that  what  Tourgee  deemed  to  be  in 
dependence  was  regarded  as  pig-headedness  by  his 
superior  officers,  and  probability  strongly  favors  their 
opinion. 

Upon  thus  severing  his  connection  with  the  army, 
Tourgee  without  doubt  at  once  went  home,  though 
the  next  five  months  are  a  blank  as  far  as  definite  facts 
are  concerned.  At  all  events,  on  May  2,  1864,  the 
anniversary  of  his  birth  in  a  month  which  he  always 
regarded  as  peculiarly  lucky  for  him,  he  was  admitted 
to  the  bar  at  Painsville,  Ohio,  and  at  once  entered  the 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  31 

law  office  of  the  firm  with  which  he  had  previously 
studied,  Sherman  &  Farmer.  On  July  2,  licenses  to 
practise  law  and  to  act  as  Claim  Agent  were  granted 
him  at  Ashtabula,  Ohio.  Here  there  is  another  gap 
in  biographic  facts  and  a  jump  of  eight  months  must 
be  made,  during  which  time  he  was  doubtless  in 
creasing  his  knowledge  of  law,  acquiring  some  financial 
rewards,  and  enjoying  marital  felicity.  The  jump  just 
referred  to  ends  in  March,  1865,  when  for  some  rea 
son  he  became  a  teacher  in  Erie  Academy,  Erie,  Penn 
sylvania,  where  he  remained  till  the  end  of  the  school 
year.  He  also  did  some  writing  for  The  Erie  Dispatch 
during  this  time.  It  is  also  possible  that,  at  some  time 
during  the  spring  or  early  summer  of  this  year,  he 
sought  and  obtained  the  rank  of  major  of  a  colored 
regiment,  and  that  he  was  on  his  way  to  resume  his 
war  activities  when  the  end  of  the  struggle  made  any 
future  military  career  for  him  impossible.  Certainly 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  such  a  command 
would  have  been  very  acceptable  to  him,  had  his  health 
been  good  enough  to  make  such  an  honor  possible,  al 
though  this  is  very  doubtful. 

For  the  time  was  now  nearly  at  hand  when,  prin 
cipally  on  account  of  his  health,  Tourgee  was  to  take 
the  step  which  proved  to  be  far  more  important  in  its 
consequences  than  all  the  events  of  his  life  thus  far 
put  together.  In  fact,  had  he  not  embarked  on  this 
enterprise,  it  is  very  doubtful  if  any  but  his  immediate 
friends  would  ever  have  remembered  his  name,  or 
any  account  of  his  life  been  thought  of  sufficient  value 
and  interest  to  be  recorded. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  SOUTH 

IN  July,  1865,  Tourgee  went  South  alone  to  seek  a 
new  home  for  himself  and  his  wife.  His  precarious 
health  was,  as  already  stated,  the  chief  motive  for  this 
venture,  for  his  spinal  wound,  the  general  hardship  of 
life  in  the  army,  together  with  a  weakness  of  the  lungs 
which  was  probably  inherited  from  his  mother,  had 
all  combined  to  make  him  anything  but  robust  at  this 
time.  For  several  weeks  he  was  engaged  as  counsel  in 
a  court  martial  then  being  held  at  Raleigh,  North 
Carolina,  and  for  the  next  few  weeks  he  made  an  ex 
tensive  tour  through  that  state  and  Georgia  also  to 
seek  a- permanent  residence  near  the  Atlantic  seacoast. 
Greensboro,  North  Carolina,  was  the  locality  finally 
selected,  partly  because  he  liked  the  place  as  well  as 
any  he  had  seen,  and  also  because  he  was  there  able 
to  rent  the  West  Green  Nurseries  from  C.  P.  Menden- 
hall — for  he  had  decided  to  engage  in  the  nursery  busi 
ness  as  well  as  in  his  regular  profession.  Having  thus 
brought  to  a  successful  conclusion  his  search  for  a 
home  better  adapted  to  his  state  of  health,  he  returned 
to  Ohio  in  the  latter  part  of  August.  The  next  few 
weeks  were  spent  in  settling  his  business  affairs,  and 

32 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  33 

the  fourteenth  of  October  found  him  and  his  wife  in 
Greensboro  with  a  capital  of  $5000  acquired  through 
his  legal  activities. 

And  so,  from  being  a  respected  citizen  of  the  North, 
in  whose  recent  victoriously  concluded  cause  he  was  an 
honored  veteran,  Tourgee  became  not  a  citizen  but  a 
"carpet-bagger"  in  the  denuded,  poverty-stricken 
South,  whose  wounds  were  still  unstanched,  whose 
efficient  white  male  population  was  almost  wiped  out, 
whose  territory  was  teeming  with  recently  liberated, 
hence  inexpressibly  despised,  negroes,  and  whose  proud 
spirit,  smarting  with  the  sense  of  intolerable  defeat, 
regarded  almost  everything  Northern  with  fearful 
hatred. 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  biography  to  discuss  in 
detail  the  Reconstruction  Period,  for  that  has  already 
been  done  for  the  South  as  a  whole1  and  for  the  part 
in  which  Tourgee  lived  in  particular.2  The  interest 
in  this  discussion  lies  in  the  special  part  played  by  him 
in  this  movement,  and  the  indelible  results  of  this 
experience  which  showed  themselves  in  his  character 
and  in  his  writings. 

Picture  the  situation.  To  this  land,  a  land  cursed 
by  war,  pestilence  and  famine,  came  this  youthful, 

1  "History  of  the  United  States,"  by  James  Ford  Rhodes,  The 
Macmillan  Co.,  New  York,  1906,  Vols.  6  and  7.  Also  "The 
American  Nation :  A  History ;"  General  Editor  A.  B.  Hart ;  Vol. 
23,  "Reconstruction  Political  and  Social,  1865-1877,"  by  W.  A. 
Dunning,  Harper  &  Brothers,  1907. 

•Columbia  University  Dissertation,  "Reconstruction  in  North 
Carolina,"  by  J.  G.  de  Roulhac  Hamilton,  Edwards  &  Broughton, 
Raleigh,  N.  C,  1906. 


34  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

impetuous,  headstrong  lawyer  who  believed  in  himself 
and  the  cause  of  the  North  absolutely  without  reserve, 
and  who  did  not,  at  least  in  his  early  years,  know  the 
meaning  of  the  words  prudence  and  restraint.  •  This 
being  true,  there  could  be  but  one  result :  enemies  on 
every  hand,  both  of  reputation  and  life  itself,  oppro 
brium,  and  what  amounted  practically  to  social 
ostracism,  save  for  the  friendship  of  the  negroes,  the 
handful  of  carpet-baggers,  and  a  comparatively  few 
Southerners,  mostly  Republicans,  whose  sympathies 
were  not  wholly  with  their  native  land.  This,  then,  is 
in  general  what  Tourgee  experienced  during  the  next 
fourteen  years;  a  detailed  account  of  the  specific  oc 
currences  in  his  life  during  this  period  follows. 

As  has  been  noted,  Tourgee  began  his  life  here  by 
engaging  in  the  nursery  business.  After  a  few  months 
of  conducting  the  enterprise  alone,  during  which  time 
he  also  practised  law,  he  decided  that  an  increase  of 
capital  as  well  as  other  tangible  assistance  was  ad 
visable.  There  is  still  extant  a  contract  dated  March 
1 6,  1866,  which  reveals  that  at  that  time  a  firm  was 
organized  by  Tourgee,  Seneca  Kuhn  of  Greensboro, 
and  R.  L.  Pettingill,  formerly  of  Rochester,  with  a 
joint  capital  of  $4500  in  three  equal  shares,  to  be 
known  as  the  Tourgee,  Kuhn  &  Pettingill  Firm,  for 
the  purpose  of  conducting  the  nursery  business.  Prob 
ably  this  same  triumvirate  also  practised  law  together 
under  the  name  of  A.  W.  Tourgee  &  Co.,  although  it 
is  not  certain  that  Pettingill  was  a  partner.  But  the 
bonds  apparently  thus  firmly  forged  were  soon  broken, 
for  Pettingill  withdrew  from  the  nursery  firm  in  the 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  »  35 

following  summer,  and  Kuhn  followed  suit  on  De 
cember  6,  1866.  Soon  after  this,  Tourgee  and  Kuhn 
also  dissolved  the  ties  of  legal  partnership.  The  exact 
reasons  for  these  dissolutions  are  not  definitely  known, 
though  Tourgee  later  referred  to  Kuhn  as  a  "rascal," 
apparently  because  he  appropriated  certain  funds  to 
himself ;  but  this  being  a  favorite  derogatory  epithet  of 
Tourgee's,  it  is  perhaps  best  to  state  the  mere  facts  and 
not  attempt  to  draw  conclusions.  At  all  events,  there 
is  a  sudden  cessation  at  this  time  of  any  further  in 
formation  about  the  nursery  business,  whereas  there  is 
abundance  of  evidence  that  ere  long  Tourgee  was  hard 
pressed  for  money;  and  by  June,  1867,  the  nursery 
venture  had  found  an  early  gra've,  while  Tourgee  was 
left  several  thousand  dollars  in  debt. 

During  the  year  1866  he  had  already  begun  that 
fearless  and  imprudent  course  of  unceasing  criticism 
of  all  things  Southern  that  marked  his  whole  subse 
quent  career.  He  was  a  delegate  to  the  Loyalist  Con 
vention  held  at  Philadelphia  in  September,  which 
"was  designed  to  bring  about  a  demonstration  by  the 
thick-and-thin  opponents  of  secession  and  Confeder 
acy,  who,  through  the  operation  of  Johnson's  policy, 
had  been  overwhelmed  in  their  respective  states  by  the 
popular  ex-Confederates."  1  At  this  convention  he 
delivered  a  speech  in  which  he  bitterly  assailed  the 
South  for  its  treatment  of  the  negro.  This,  together 
with  other  utterances 'of  a  similar  unqualified  nature, 
led  to  his  receiving  the  first  of  a  series  of  anonymous 

'"Reconstruction  Political  and  Social,"  by  W.  A.  Dunning, 
P.  77. 


36  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

letters,  which  from  that  time  on  were  showered  upon 
him  during  his  stay  in  the  South.  Several  of  these 
made  the  customary  threat  of  giving  him  a  coat  of  tar 
and  feathers  if  his  "lying  tung,"  as  one  epistle  put  it, 
was  not  stopped.  Some  of  them  were,  however, 
friendly  letters  warning  him  for  the  sake  of  personal 
safety  to  be  discreet  or  else  leave  the  South.  But 
threats  or  words  of  friendly  counsel  equally  failed  to 
move  him,  though  in  the  following  year  he  took  the 
wise  precaution  of  requesting  and  obtaining  permis 
sion  to  carry  firearms  for  personal  protection. 

Meanwhile,  undaunted  by  disrupted  partnerships 
and  the  imminent  failure  of  his  nursery,  the  irrepres 
sible  Tourgee,  whose  faith  in  all  sorts  of  financial  will- 
o-the-wisps  seemed  to  grow  stronger  every  time  it  was 
knocked  topsy-turvy,  was  already  forming  a  new 
enterprise  even  before  the  final  failure  of  his  first  busi 
ness  experience.  He  had  probably  been  engaged  in 
the  real  estate  business  in  1866,  possibly  again  with  a 
partner;  at  any  rate,  the  statement  that  the  first  half 
of  the  year  1867  saw  him  embarked  on  his  first 
journalistic  venture  fortunately  needs  no  qualification. 
On  January  3,  1867,  there  appeared  the  first  edition 
of  The  Union  Register,  published  by  the  Union  Pub 
lishing  Company  at  Greensboro.  This  was  a  weekly 
newspaper  containing  four  very  large  pages  of  seven 
columns  each,  which  sold  for  three  dollars  per  year. 
While  Tourgee's  name  does  not  appear  directly  in 
print  as  editor  of  this  paper,  its  editor  he  unquestion 
ably  was ;  and  the  following  utterance,  taken  from  the 
editorial  of  the  first  number  and  explaining  the  func- 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  37 

tion  of  the  paper,  is  with  little  doubt  his  own  pro 
nouncement:  "We  are  aware  that  the  advocacy  of 
Union  principles;  or,  if  you  prefer  the  word,  radical 
principles,  is  anything  but  a  popular  movement  in  any 
part  of  the  South.  It  is  what  we  have  enlisted  for, 
however.  .  .  .  Let  us  ...  give  our  strength  to  loose  it 
[the  South]  from  the  slough  of  ignorance  and 
prejudice."  This  same  editorial  also  speaks  of  the 
"poor,  misguided  and  mismanaged  South."  An  edi 
torial  on  January  25  also  gives  the  unnecessary  in 
formation  that  "the  Register  hopes  never  to  be  a  'mild* 
advocate  of  anything" ;  for  if  Tourgee  ever  reiterated 
his  entire  lack  of  lukewarmness  once,  he  did  it  a  thou 
sand  times.  It  would  seem  that  the  statement  of  the 
first  editorial  to  the  effect  that  the  advocacy  of  Union 
principles  was  anything  but  a  popular  Southern  move 
ment  had  amply  proved  itself  by  the  following  June, 
for  an  editorial  on  the  fourteenth  of  that  month  states 
that  the  "present  number  of  the  Register  is  the  last 
which  will  be  published  in  its  present  locality.  .  .  .  Six 
months  ago,  under  every  possible  form  of  discourage 
ment,  the  Register  sprang  into  life,  the  unfaltering 
champion  of  true  and  absolute  Republicanism.  .  .  .  The 
hundreds  of  North  Carolinians  who  are  patrons  of  the 
Register  may  be  regarded  as  the  forlorn  hope  of  true 
Republicanism  in  the  state."  Other  editorials  had 
advocated  the  principles  which  Tourgee  fought  for  in 
the  convention  the  following  year.  The  paper  was 
transferred  to  Raleigh  under  different  management, 
to  which  place  it  is  probable  that  the  "forlorn  hope" 
sent  many  letters  of  inquiry  as  to  the  fate  of  the  three 


38  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

dollars  which  had  been  invested  by  many  Republicans 
in  a  year's  subscription.  Thus  ended  in  failure  an 
other  of  Tourgee's  attempts  to  succeed  in  an  under 
taking  which  required  the  "head  for  business"  he  did 
not  have.  That  it  was  a  failure,  though  partly  be 
cause  of  extraneous  reasons,  is  sufficiently  attested  in 
his  own  words,  in  a  letter  dated  April  2,  1868:  "I 
started  one  newspaper  here  at  Greensboro — -the 
Register — and  it  ran  on  until,  by  exterior  mishaps,  I 
lost  all  I  had  brought  here."  This  is  probably  a  refer 
ence  to  the  nursery  fiasco;  at  any  rate,  the  newspaper 
was  not  successful,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  it  paid  for  the 
cost  of  its  production.  These  various  enterprises  of 
his,  however,  failures  though  they  had  been,  combined 
to  make  him  a  fairly  prominent  figure  in  the  public 
eye. 

Tourgee  was  already  forming  the  habit  of  making 
speeches  whenever  opportunity  offered,  in  which  he 
was  apparently  utterly  reckless  of  the  effects  of  his 
statements  on  the  feelings  of  his  audience.  A  South 
ern  gentleman  later  commented  thus  on  one  of  these 
speeches  delivered  at  Greensboro :  "He  let  fly  a  speech 
at  Andrew  Johnson  which,  I  reckon,  made  him  the 
most  hated  man  in  all  that  community.  He  said  he 
was  worse  than  Catiline ;  that  he  was  no  improvement 
on  Jefferson  Davis,  etc.  While  we  all  listened  in 
speechless  disgust,  I  couldn't  help  admiring  the  per 
sistence  and  pluck  of  the  little  devil."  * 

Hated  or  not,  however,  the  "little  devil"  would  have 
been  appointed  Judge  of  the  Superior  Court,  Seventh 

*New  York  Tribune,  April  4,  1881. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  39 

Judicial  District  of  North  Carolina,  in  the  early  part 
of  1867,  nad  it  not  been  for  the  bitterness  entertained 
against  him  by  the  governor  of  the  state,  Jonathan 
Worth,  who  had  read  Tourgee's  speech  which  had 
been  delivered  at  the  Loyalist  Convention  in  Phila 
delphia  in  September,  1866,  and  who  now  attacked 
him  vehemently  for  its  statements  about  Southern 
atrocities  against  the  negro.  Governor  Worth  in  his 
correspondence  gives  vent  to  his  opinions  about 
Tourgee  in  the  following  language:  "Tourgee,  the 
meanest  Yankee  who  has  ever  settled  among  us";1 
"this  vile  wretch  Tourgee";2  "this  contemptible 
Tourgee"  3  and,  perhaps  most  scathing  of  all,  simply, 
"this  Tourgee."  4  In  giving  his  reasons  for  objecting 
to  Tourgee  as  a  judge,  Worth  says :  "I  am  sure  I  have 
heard  more  than  100  men  speak  of  Tourgee  as  a  man 
of  'most  contemptible  character'  and  I  never  heard  one 
speak  well  of  him."  5  The  irascible  governor  also 
stated  on  May  26,  1868,  that  Tourgee  had  "never 
practised  law  in  this  state  nor  had  a  license  to  prac 
tise"  ;  6  but  this  statement  was  incorrect,  for  in  a  letter 
to  the  Paymaster  General  at  Washington,  March  23, 
1868,  Tourgee  says  that  he  has  held  a  license  to  prac 
tise  since  1867,  and  objects  against  being  taxed  for  a 
new  license.  But  the  doughty  governor's  opposition 

luThe  Correspondence  of  Jonathan  Worth,"  collected  and 
edited  by  J.  G.  de  Roulhac  Hamilton,  Raleigh,  Edwards  & 
Broughton,  1909.  Two  vols.  Vol.  II,  p.  1120. 

*Ibid.,  p.  776. 

•Ibid.,  777- 

4  Ibid. 

'Ibid.,  1114. 

'Ibid.,  1213. 


40  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

to  Tourgee  as  a  judge  had  merely  the  effect  of  post 
poning  that  event  only  a  little  over  a  year;  for  on 
March  21,  1868,  Tourgee  wrote  a  letter  accepting  the 
nomination  for  the  office  of  judge,  and  in  the  election 
which  followed  he  was  put  in  the  office  by  a  majority 
of  over  twenty-five  thousand. 

Before  this  personal  triumph,  however,  an  event  took 
place  with  which  Tourgee's  name  is  closely  associated. 
On  January  14,  1868,  a  Constitutional  Convention  met 
at  Raleigh  and  one  of  the  members  was  Tourgee.  The 
delegation  included  13  Conservatives,  107  Republicans 
(of  whom  1 6  were  carpet-baggers)  and  13  negroes.1 
Hence  it  was  that  "Individually  and  collectively  the 
'carpet-baggers*  controlled  the  convention  absolutely."2 
Tourgee  himself  advocated  that  the  entire  state  debt 
of  the  new  North  Carolina  should  be  repudiated.  But 
this  doctrine  was  too  strong  for  the  majority,  being  at 
tacked  even  by  three  colored  delegates,  and  so  was 
defeated.3  He  was,  however,  appointed  one  of  three 
commissioners  for  a  term  of  three  years  at  a  salary 
of  $200  a  month  to  codify  the  laws  of  the  State.4  In 
this  capacity  he  was  the  chief  figure  in  putting  into 
organic  law  the  Code  of  Civil  Procedure,  largely  a 
Northern  idea,  copied  from  the  codes  of  New  York 
and  Ohio.  This  code  was  of  course  strongly  opposed 
by  some  Southern  lawyers,  but  finally  proved  its  worth, 

'"Reconstruction  in  North  Carolina/'  Hamilton,  p.  229. 
*Ibid.,  237. 
9  Ibid.,  23a 
.,  239, 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  41 

since  it  was  much  less  cumbersome  than  the  old  code 
had  been. 

The  following  excerpts  from  a  letter  of  Tourgee's 
to  his  daughter,  dated  February  i,  1890,  will  serve  to 
show  his  own  reaction  to  this  convention,  to  his  election 
as  judge,  and  to  his  first  literary  work  of  importance: 
"The  fear  of  starvation  and  shame  led  me  to  fight  for 
a  place  as  a  member  of  the  Constitutional  Convention 
of  1868.  I  found  myself  the  strongest  man  in  it.  I 
suffered  almost  mortal  agony  over  the  task  of  under 
taking  the  duties  of  the  Judgeship  in  1868.  It  was 
easy  to  me  and  I  won  honor  in  it.  ...  I  do  not  suppose 
any  one  who  knew  me  would  have  advised  me  to  get 
an  election  to  the  Convention,  to  accept  the  Judgeship, 
or  to  write  'Toinette.'  They  are  the  three  things  on 
which  my  successes  are  all  based." 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  tone  of  this  letter, 
written  to  show  his  daughter  the  necessity  of  follow 
ing  one's  own  star  and  of  making  decisions  without 
waiting  for  advice,  it  is  certain  that  many  Southern 
gentlemen  would  not  have  advised  him  to  do  any  of 
the  above  things.  One  of  them  would  doubtless  have 
been  the  person  referred  to  in  a  letter  of  Tourgee's 
dated  April  2,  1868 :  "You  would  have  been  in  danger 
of  spasms  if  you  had  seen  me  drop  a  platter  over  an 
opponent's  pate  at  a  public  dinner  last  week.  He  called 
me  a  'rascal.'  Of  course  I  cared  not  a  flea-bite  for  his 
words,  but  if  I  had  not  resented  them  the  crowd  would 
have  set  me  down  as  a  coward.  So  I  was  fool  enough 
to  do  it."  This  first  "fool's  errand"  episode  of  which 


42  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

there  is  any  mention  doubtless  refers  to  his  campaign 
as  a  candidate  for  the  office  of  judge,  and  the  incident 
related  is  but  one  of  many  in  a  campaign  of  general 
vilification  on  both  sides.  It  seems  that  Governor 
Worth  was  still  on  the  war-path,  for  in  a  private  letter 
dated  April  15,  1868,  Tourgee  says:  "I  happen  to 
know  that  Governor  Worth  used  every  inducement  to 
get  some  of  my  enemies  here  to  slander  me,  ...  I  in 
tend  to  make  the  old  scoundrel  smart  for  it  some  time 
and  perhaps  some  others/'  One  type  of  slander  directed 
at  him  was  the  deliberate  charge,  printed  by  several 
newspapers,  that  he  had  been  in  an  Ohio  prison  four 
and  one  half  years  for  burglary.  This  malicious  lie 
Tourgee  at  once  indignantly  denied  and  offered  a  re 
ward  of  $1000  to  anyone  who  could  show  tangible 
evidence  connecting  him  with  such  guilt.  It  is  more 
than  doubtful  if  he  could  have  paid  such  a  sum  at  that 
particular  time,  but  he  was  of  course  aware  that  he 
was  safe  in  offering  to  do  so.  His  usual  method  of 
answering  these  assaults  upon  his  character,  whether 
in  his  private  letters  or  in  articles  intended  for  pub 
lication,  was  to  state  that  such  low,  mean,  contemptible 
reptiles  as  those  who  were  attacking  him  deserved  only 
silent  contempt;  and  he  would  then  forthwith  proceed 
to  dig  up  every  scurrilous  adjective  he  could  think  of 
to  hurl  at  their  heads,  silently  contemptuous  for  any 
where  from  five  to  thirty  pages. 

In  spite  of  these  numerous  enemies  of  his,  however, 
Tourgee  was  elected  judge  and  began  his  duties  in 
August,  1868,  duties  which  occupied  his  time  for  the 
next  six  years.  As  his  jurisdiction  extended  over 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  43 

eight  counties,  he  was  absent  from  home  much  of  the 
time.  The  $5000  per  year  which  his  office  paid  him, 
together  with  the  money  received  for  helping  codify 
the  laws  of  the  state,  enabled  him  in  the  following  year 
to  pay  off  the  still  remaining  debts  of  Tourgee  &  Co., 
as  well  as  to  purchase  a  house  and  lot  on  Asheboro 
Street  for  $3500,  which  was  probably  a  welcome 
change  for  him  and  his  wife  after  their  life  on  the 
nursery  farm  about  four  miles  west  of  Greensboro. 
But  that  he  still  considered  himself  underpaid  for  his 
services  on  the  bench  is  sufficiently  attested  by  a  docu 
ment  drawn  up  by  him  in  July,  1868,  entitled  "Reasons 
for  the  Increase  of  Judges'  Salaries/'  a  document 
which  would  probably  never  have  seen  the  light  of  day 
had  he  not  himself  been  a  judge. 

It  was  during  the  period  in  which  he  was  judge 
that  Tourgee  experienced  the  most  exciting  events  of 
his  more  than  ordinarily  exciting  career.  There  can 
be  little  question  that  his  life  was  in  almost  constant 
danger  during  this  time.  The  chief  factor  in  this  was 
of  course  the  notorious  Ku  Klux  Klan,  the  secret  or 
ganization  which  history  and  tradition  have  made  so 
familiar  as  to  need  no  discussion  here.  Tourgee,  with 
his  uncompromising  carpet-bagger  traits,  which  were 
shown  in  giving  preference  to  negroes  over  whites 
whenever  suitable  opportunity  offered,  was  a  perfectly 
natural  object  for  its  attack.  His  private  letters  during 
this  period  abound  in  references  to  the  active  hostility 
which  this  terrorizing  band  manifested  against  him. 
He  received  many  notices  which  definitely  fixed  the 
time  when  he  was  to  be  assassinated,  as  well  as  a  paper, 


44  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

pinned  by  a  knife  to  his  door,  on  which  was  a  picture 
of  a  coffin  and  a  written  notice  that  he  was  doomed  to 
an  agonizing  death.  On  one  occasion  the  place  fixed 
for  his  assassination  was  the  room  in  which  he  was 
holding  court,  the  murder  to  be  done  after  he  had 
finished  speaking  and  had  turned  his  back  to  retire 
through  a  door  in  the  rear.  Luckily  the  plot  was  re 
vealed  to  him  and  he  held  court-  all  the  morning,  to  all 
appearances  as  unconcernedly  as  ever ;  but  when  he  had 
completed  the  morning's  work,  instead  of  retiring  to 
the  rear,  he  walked  straight  through  the  crowded 
room  across  the  street  to  his  hotel,  where  an  immediate 
change  of  clothes  was  necessary,  since  his  suit  was 
damp  with  perspiration  caused  by  nervous  reaction 
after  the  danger  was  past.  Attempts  were  also  made 
to  ambush  him,  but  he  fortunately  escaped  and  kept 
doggedly  to  his  task  of  journeying  on  horseback  to 
hold  court  in  different  parts  of  his  jurisdiction. 

By  1870,  however,  the  grim  Ku  Klux  shadow  al 
ways  at  his  heels,  together  with  consideration  for  the 
terrific  strain  put  upon  his  wife's  nerves  when  he  was 
traveling  about  constantly  menaced  by  these  dangers, 
at  last  induced  him  to  think  seriously  of  leaving  the 
state  for  a  time.  His  life  became  more  precious  and 
necessary  than  ever  in  that  year  too,  for  on  November 
19,  1870,  his  only  child,  a  daughter,  first  called  Lodie, 
after  her  mother's  middle  name,  and  later  Aimee,  was 
born;  and  so,  despite  great  personal  bravery,  he  de 
cided  that  prudence  made  it  necessary  for  him  tempor 
arily  to  leave  the  state.  The  Ku  Klux  was  dogging 
him  hotter  than  ever  now,  because  in  the  summer  of 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  45 

1870  a  strictly  private  letter  of  his  had  been  published 
by  Governor  Holden,  which  had  virulently  attacked 
the  Ku  Klux  for  its  various  outrages  on  the  negroes, 
and  had  cited  many  specific  cases  of  its  misdeeds. 
Hence  it  was  that  one  of  his  August  letters  had  the 
following:  "I  think  ....  it  may  be  mere  common 
prudence  to  get  away  from  K.  K.  K.  cords  and  daggers 
for  a  year  or  two.  I  am  not  going  to  give  up  my  grip, 
but  just  let  go  to  get  a  new  hold."  Another  letter  of 
the  same  month  contains  this  outburst:  "I  wouldn't 
mind  yellow  fever,  cholera,  fleas,  earthquakes,  vertigo, 
smallpox,  cannibalism,  icebergs,  sharks,  or  any  other 
name  or  shape  of  horror — provided  always  there  are 
no  K.  K.  K."  And  this  same  letter,  marked  "confiden 
tial,"  has  this  closing  passage:  "Now — you  go  and 
publish  this  a  la  Holden  and  if  you  are  not  damned  for 
it  it  shall  not  be  my  fault."  What  Tourgee  particularly 
wished  was  the  Consulate  in  South  America,  more 
particularly  still  in  Chile,  for  he  was  fairly  proficient 
in  Spanish,  partly  acquired,  as  will  be  remembered, 
while  he  was  a  prisoner  of  war.  He  would  have  been 
satisfied  had  the  salary  been  sufficient  only  to  pay  his 
expenses.  But  the  position  did  not  come;  accordingly, 
not  having  found  any  opening  that  suited  him,  he 
remained  where  he  was,  still  braving  the  dangers  of 
the  Ku  Klux,  even  though  he  was  "so  sick  of  the 

whole  d d  country,"  as  another  letter  puts  it 

The  following  year  saw  him  again  chasing  the  ever 
vanishing  phantom  of  success  in  business.  He  con 
ceived  the  idea  that  some  of  the  timber  in  the  state 
might  profitably  be  converted  into  various  sorts  of  tool- 


46  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

handles,  and  then  followed  the  formation  of  the  North 
Carolina  Handle  Company.  This  new  firm  was 
started  with  the  enthusiasm  that  he  always  showed 
when  he  was  just  entering  upon  some  new  venture, 
an  enthusiasm  that  lasted  to  the  end  of  his  life,  despite 
the  fact  that  he  always  failed  signally  in  everything 
that  demanded  business  ability.  In  February,  1871, 
he  was  trying  to  mortgage  his  property  to  obtain  funds 
for  the  new  company,  a  practice  which  he  always  fol 
lowed  when  in  pursuit  of  any  new  financial  chimera. 
On  February  22  he  said  in  a  letter :  "I  know  but  little 
more  than  I  did.  ...  as  to  where  the  funds  are  com 
ing  from.  ...  I  am  just  going  to  trust  blindly  in  my 
usual  luck  and  go  on  until  I  come  out  or  am  stopped 
entirely."  Thus,  much  as  Robinson  Crusoe  hollowed 
out  his  boat  without  considering  how  he  was  going  to 
launch  it,  Tourgee  started  in  great  optimism  to  build 
the  handle  factory  when  he  had  no  funds  with  which 
to  complete  it.  Further  details  of  this  affair  are  not 
very  clear,  though  there  are  still  a  few  letters  extant 
showing  that  some  business  was  done.  Apparently  it 
lasted  till  the  autum  of  1873,  when  the  panic  came. 
It  left  him  with  liabilities  of  $30,000  and  only  a 
quantity  of  unsalable  stock  with  which  to  meet  them ; 
for  what  little  he  had  at  this  time  consisted  in  mort 
gages  on  real  estate.  He  set  himself  to  work  to  pay 
off  these  debts  with  his  characteristic  determination, 
as  a  letter  of  his  dated  June  20,  1876,  shows:  "The 
monetary  misfortunes  of  which  you  are  already  in 
formed  have  given  me  two  years  of  very  hard  work, 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  47 

though  I  can  now  see  that  they  have  been  of  great 
advantage  to  me." 

It  is,  however,  Tourgee,  the  successful  novelist, 
rather  than  Tourgee,  the  unsuccessful  business  man, 
who  is  of  chief  interest;  for  his  literary  labors  during 
these  eventful  years  had  again  been  resumed.  At  vari 
ous  times  from  1866  to  1870  he  had  written  articles 
of  a  political  nature  to  some  of  the  newspapers  in  his 
vicinity,  signed  "Wenckar,"  a  variation  of  his  mother's 
maiden  name.  Several  fragments  of  manuscripts  of 
his  written  during  this  period  are  extant,  one  being 
the  outlined  chapters  of  what  was  apparently  to  be  a 
novel  called  "My  Horses/'  full  of  horses  and  sentiment. 
He  was  a  great  lover  of  horses  all  his  life  and  at 
various  times  owned  some  fine  "steppers."  Other 
literary  relics  of  this  period  are :  the  concluding  chap 
ters  of  a  novel  whose  events  took  place  in  Scotland,  a 
story  of  "adventure  and  love";  fragmentary  remains 
of  a  very  long  poem  dealing  with  cruelty  to  the  negro ; 
and  several  speeches  delivered  on  various  memorial 
days  in  the  South,  filled  with  the  usual  patriotic 
platitudes.  During  1871  and  1872,  he  wrote  a  dozen 
or  so  articles  to  the  newspapers  under  the  pseudonym 
of  "God's  Anynted  Phue,"  a  supposedly  popular  ren 
dering  of  "God's  Anointed  Few."  These  articles,  in 
the  form  of  poems,  letters  and  sermons,  ironically  at 
tack  the  pride,  clannishness  and  class  hatred  which 
Tourgee  always  attributed  to  the  Southerners,  "God's 
Anynted  Phue"  being  a  particularly  crass  example  of 
Southern  egotism. 


48  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

But  it  was  not  until  1874  that  his  first  major  work 
appeared.  That  year  saw  the  publication  of 
"Toinette,"  which  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  been  written 
in  1868-9.  Following  a  practice  which  had  already 
been  established,  and  which  was  doubtless  begun  as  a 
means  of  avoiding  personal  attacks,  Tourgee  published 
this  book  under  the  non  de  plume  "Henry  Churton." 
In  i  §8 1,  when  the  book  reappeared  under  his  own 
name  with  the  new  title,  "A  Royal  Gentleman,*'  he 
wrote  a  preface  which  makes  plain  his  purpose  in 
penning  the  story.  He  believed  that  the  anti-slavery 
writers  of  the  North  had  tended  to  magnify  the  chief 
apparent  evil  of  slavery — cruelty  to  the  negro — at  the 
expense  of  what  was  the  basis  of  the  whole  system, 
the  Southern  aristocratic  conception  of  society,  in 
which  the  prime  element  was  pride  of  caste.  With  this 
idea  in  mind,  he  attempted  to  delineate  types  of  the 
slave,  the  freeman,  the  "poor  white,"  and  the  "royal 
gentleman,"  or  the  slave-holder.  He  wished  also  to 
show  that,  while  slavery  in  name  had  been  abolished, 
it  was  actually  as  much  alive  as  ever,  because  the  re 
sults  of  the  Civil  War  had  not  changed,  but  rather 
strengthened,  the  belief  of  the  Southerners  in  their 
superiority  to  the  people  of  the  North,  and  in  their 
right  to  dominate  the  negro,  if  not  physically,  at  least 
socially  and  politically.  In  other  words,  the  Civil 
War  had  merely  lopped  off  a  few  branches  from  the 
tree  of  slavery,  but  had  left  its  roots  and  trunk  un 
touched.  From  all  this  it  followed,  still  according  to 
Tourgee,  that  slavery  was  a  much  greater  evil  to  the 
slave-holder  than  to  the  slave  himself.  These,  then, 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  49 

were  the  several  ideas  underlying  this  story,  which 
opens  in  1858  and  runs  briefly  thus: 

Geoffrey  Htinter,  the  "royal  gentleman,"  is  atypical 
young  Southern  lawyer,  in  whose  father's  house  is 
Toinette,  a  beautiful  slave  who  has  only  ia  trace  of 
dark  blood  in  her  veins,  and  of  whom  he  is  very  fond. 
He  aids  her  in  obtaining  an  education,  with  the  in 
tention  of  giving  her  her  freedom,  which  he  finally 
does.  Meanwhile  the  usual  result  of  such  close 
intimacy  follows,  the  Civil  War  conies,  and  Geoffrey 
goes  to  fight,  leaving  Toinette  and  their  child  at  his 
home.  He  is  severely  wounded  and  Toinette  comes  to 
nurse  him  back  to  life  and  health ;  but  when  he  proposes 
a  renewal  of  their  old  intimacy,  she  declines  unless  he 
will  marry  her.  This  he  of  course  angrily  refuses  to 
do,  still  regarding  her  as  his  chattel;  she  accordingly 
leaves  him  for  good  and  they  both  live  sorrowfully 
ever  after. 

This  tale  contains  most  of  the  faults  and  virtues 
which  subsequently  appeared  in  Tourgee's  stories. 
The  plot  is  artificial,  depending  largely  upon  coin 
cidence;  the  characters,  though  called  "types,"  are  far 
from  typical,  because  their  traits  are  so  much  exagger 
ated.  The  slave,  Toinette,  is  impossibly  idealized;  it 
is  doubtful  if  one  in  a  million  of  her  class  ever  ap 
proached  her  in  combined  beauty,  grace,  intellect,  and 
morality — for  she  is  of  course  held  blameless  of  her 
relations  with  Hunter.  He  is  a  possible  figure,  though 
he  represents  Tourgee's  conception  of  the  typical 
Southern  gentleman  rather  than  the  actuality.  The 
"poor  white,"  Betty  Certain,  is  also  idealized  far  be- 


SO  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

yond  her  class.  There  are  several  reminders  of  Gothic 
Romance  in  the  form  of  a  supposed  ghost,  a  concealed 
drawer,  and  in  the  attempt  to  create  different  kinds  of 
physical  horror  of  the  midnight  variety.  The  story  is 
constantly  interrupted  by  pronouncements  against 
slavery,  and  eulogies  of  Lincoln,  who  is  unnecessarily, 
not  to  say  unhistorically,  dragged  in  several  times. 
And  yet  the  tale  is  by  no  means  lacking  in  a  certain 
kind  of  merit.  Impossible  as  the  highly  sentimentalized 
Toinette  is,  this  first  of  the  large  family  of  idealized 
negroes  portrayed  by  Tourgee  is  possibly  the  most  im 
pressive  creation  of  the  whole  lot.  Betty  Certain, 
despite  the  unconvincing  complexity  of  her  character, 
is  a  striking  figure  at  times.  And  in  melodramatic 
narrative,  which  was  always  Tourgee' s  forte  as  a 
novelist,  there  are  several  really  powerful  specimens: 
Hunter's  midnight  search  for  the  ghost,  his  rescue  of 
his  drowning  son,  and  especially  the  fight  between 
Betty  Certain  and  Toinette' s  ghostly  mother.  All  in 
all,  however,  it  can  justly  be  said  that  Tourgee's  re 
mark  in  the  preface  to  the  1881  volume,  "it  is  a  picture 
of  facts"  while  not  completely  wrong  is  certainly 
largely  so,  for  he  here  made  the  same  error  which  he 
continued  to  repeat  all  his  life:  he  rarely  saw  facts, 
but  only  their  distorted  images  in  the  imperfect  mirror 
of  his  strongly  biased  personality.  The  book,  printed 
partly  to  help  pay  his  debts,  failed  in  that  purpose.  A 
letter  from  his  publishers,  Fords,  Howard,  and  Hul- 
bert,  New  York,  dated  July  i,  1875,  states  that  only 
2331  copies  had  been  sold  and  that  the  loss  on  the 
edition  had  been  about  $1100.  These  excerpts  from 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  51 

a  letter  to  his  wife,  September  4,  1875,  also  corroborate 
the  almost  certain  fact  of  the  book's  failure :  "I  fear 
nothing  can  save  us  from  complete  wreck  ...  as  to 
estate  and  property  ...  If  Toinette'  had  only  been 
a  success" — but  the  rest  of  the  sentence  need  not  be 
quoted. 

Meanwhile  his  career  as  a  judge  was  rapidly  coming 
to  an  end,  though  the  appellation  clung  to  him  through 
all  his  life.1  One  reform  which  he  caused  to  be  put 
into  execution  was  the  installation  of  heating  systems 
in  all  the  jails  in  his  district ;  for,  being  much  annoyed 
to  discover  that  there  had  never  been  a  fire  in  any 
North  Carolina  jail,  he  required  a  grand  jury  to  ascer 
tain  the  facts  and,  moved  doubtless  by  memories  of 
his  own  prison  experiences,  caused  the  remedy  to  be 
applied.  The  longer  he  was  judge,  the  stronger  be 
came  the  opposition  of  his  enemies,  and  in  1873  they 
unsuccessfully  tried  to  secure  his  impeachment.  On 
February  19  of  the  previous  year  he  had  tendered  his 
resignation  as  a  member  of  the  board  of  trustees  of 
the  University  of  North  Carolina,  because  the  press 
had  so  severely  attacked  his  appointment  that  he  feared 
that,  if  he  continued  in  that  capacity,  he  might  injure 
the  reputation  oi  the  institution.  In  1874  his  friends 
advanced  his  name  as  a  candidate  for  the  Congressional 
nomination ;  but  though  he  indicated  his  willingness  to 
accept,  in  the  usual  "This-honor-has-been-forced-upon- 

1  While  serving  as  judge,  Tourgee  recorded  many  sworn  testi 
monials  of  negroes  who  had  been  the  victims  of  Ku  Klux  out 
rages,  and  he  later  made  use  of  many  of  these  documents  in 
"The  Invisible  Empire." 


52  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

me-against-my-wishes"  type  of  speech,  the  opposition 
was  too  strong  and,  much  to  his  chagrin,  he  failed  to 
obtain  the  nomination.  In  the  following  year,  how 
ever,  he  was  re-elected  as  a  delegate  to  the  second  Con 
stitutional  Convention  at  Raleigh,  by  the  largest  ma 
jority  ever  given  to  a  candidate  from  his  county.  This 
Convention  strove  to  protect  what  had  been  accom 
plished  by  the  Convention  of  1868,  and  hence  was 
negative  in  character.  During  this  second  Convention, 
a  prominent  Democrat  made  public  threats  to  shoot 
Tourgee ;  but,  fearless  as  usual,  he  borrowed  a  revolver 
from  a  friend,  walked  up  to  the  man  in  a  public  place 
and  "remained  staring  fixedly  at  him  for  several 
moments" ;  but  no  attempt  was  made  to  put  the  threat 
into  execution. 

In  February,  1876,  President  Grant  appointed 
Tourgee  to  the  position  of  Pension  Agent  at  Raleigh, 
and  his  wife  was  appointed  clerk  to  administer  oaths. 
His  departure  from  Greensboro  to  Raleigh  was 
graphically  depicted  by  O.  Henry,  then  a  lad  of  four 
teen  living  in  Greensboro,  who  drew  a  cartoon  en 
titled  "Judge  Tourgee  Leaving  Greensboro/'  which 
represents  him  sailing  through  the  air  on  angelic  wings, 
his  left  hand  holding  a  carpet-bag,  his  right  a  handker 
chief  used  to  wipe  away  the  tears  which  can  be  seen 
dropping  from  his  one  good  eye.1  So  he  left  the  place 
which  had  been  a  residence  rather  than  a  home  for 
the  last  eleven  years,  but  the  hatred  of  his  enemies 
still  followed  him  throughout  all  his  stay  at  Raleigh. 

1"O.  Henry  Biography,"  C.  Alphonso  Smith,  Doubleday,  Page 
&  Co..  Garden  City,  N.  Y.,  1916,  p.  60. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  53 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  actual  home  was  still  at  Greens 
boro,  for  he  spent  much  time  at  his  mother-in-law's 
house  there  and  bought  no  residence  in  Raleigh,  but 
lived  in  a  hotel;  also,  he  retained  his  law  office  at 
Greensboro.  In  a  letter  written  April  15,  1877,  he 
says  that  the  feeling  against  him  since  his  appoint 
ment  as  Pension  Agent  has  been  stronger  than  ever, 
if  possible,  and  that  he  now  merely  endures  what  he 
cannot  avoid.  He  curses  his  folly  in  ever  going  South, 
and  says  he  has  stopped  going  to  church  because  of 
persecution  and  vilification  at  the  hands  of  supposedly 
Christian  brethren;  he  bitterly  attacks  the  South  and 
all  things  Southern,  and  asks  the  friend  to  whom  the 
letter  was  directed  to  be  very  discreet  because  it  is  "all 
I  can  do  to  live  among  these  people  now,"  and  he  can 
not  leave  the  South  at  present  without  serious  financial 
loss. 

In  his  new  position,  his  wife  did  nearly  all  the  actual 
work  while  he  practised  law,  endeavoring  by  these  com 
bined  means  to  pay  off  his  debts.  During  the  Presi 
dential  campaign  of  1876,  he  made  numerous  speeches 
for  the  Republican  candidate.  Two  years  later  he 
closed  his  law  office  to  run  for  Congress  in  the  Fifth 
Congressional  District,  and  succeeded  in  materially 
reducing  the  majority  of  his  Democratic  opponent,  but 
failed  to  be  elected.  He  also  lost  much  money  by  this 
venture,  but  was  nevertheless  happy  in  the  thought 
that  he  was  fighting  for  reform. 

The  closing  period  of  Tourgee's  fourteen-year  resi 
dence  in  the  South  was  a  time  of  constantly  increasing 
literary  activity  on  his  part.  While  still  a  judge  at 


54  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

Greensboro,  he  wrote  two  novelettes,  both  printed  in 
the  same  volume,  "John  Eax"  [pronounced  Eex]  and 
"Mamelon,"  two  "rifts  in  the  shadow"  pf  Southern 
conditions,  as  the  preface  says,  that  almost  constantly 
overhung  him.  The  rift  is  not  especially  pronounced 
in  either  tale,  however,  for  both  deal  largely  with  war 
conditions.  The  hero  of  "John  Eax,"  Charles  De 
Jeunette,  of  Huguenot  ancestry,  a  lawyer  by  profes 
sion,  marries  Alice  Bain,  an  English  girl  of  low  social 
rank,  and  thus  brings  upon  himself  the  bitter  hatred  of 
his  family.  He  is  imprisoned  for  debt,  but  escapes  and 
espouses  the  cause  of  the  North  in  the  Civil  War,  in 
which  he  becomes  a  general ;  and  eventually,  in  order 
to  inherit  a  large  fortune  left  to  his  wife  by  her  great 
grandfather,  John  Eax,  he  assumes  that  name  himself, 
this  being  a  condition  stipulated  in  the  will.  The 
autobiographical  elements  in  this  story  are  plainly 
evident  in  the  hero's  birth,  profession  and  war  ac 
tivities,  as  is  true  of  nearly  all  of  Tourgee's  novels. 
After  the  brief  resume  given  above,  it  need  hardly 
be  said  that  the  story  is  almost  absolutely  devoid  of 
any  semblance  of  originality,  since  it  has  all  the  ear 
marks  of  the  story  of  adventure  plus  sentiment  which 
was  so  popular  in  Tourgee's  day.  It  has  the  superb 
horses,  the  highly  colored  narrative,  the  impossible 
evolutions  of  character,  and  the  attacks  upon  the 
South,  so  characteristic  of  him.  The  tale  had  its  origin 
in  a  story,  related  to  Tourgee  by  a  good  story-teller, 
which  dealt  with  an  old  family  that  had  once  been 
prominent  in  that  vicinity.  On  the  day  after  he  heard 
this  story,  he  was  unable,  even  amid  the  routine  af- 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  55 

fairs  of  a  country  court,  to  banish  it  with  all  its  pos 
sibilities  from  his  mind;  and  that  night,  from  sunset 
till  sunrise,  he  wrote  the  one  hundred  and  thirty-five 
pages  that  make  up  the  tale.  Even  if  the  physical 
possibility  of  penning  a  story  of  one  hundred  and 
thirty-five  pages  in  a  single  night  be  granted,  candor 
still  necessitates  the  comment  that  Tourgee's  reputa 
tion  would  have  suffered  very  little  had  he  spent  that 
night  sleeping  the  sleep  of  the  unimaginative  just. 

"Mamelon"  had  its  inception  in  an  inscription  read 
on  a  tombstone  in  a  neglected  church-yard,  whither 
Tourgee  wandered  one  day  in  the  spring  of  1874  dur 
ing  a  lull  in  court  affairs;  and  there  it  was  that  the 
story  thus  suggested  took  shape  in  his  mind,  the  first 
chapters  being  written  in  the  silence  of  the  cemetery. 
The  tale  is  founded  directly  upon  his  already  narrated 
experiences  with  the  ill-fated  North  Carolina  Handle 
Company.  The  hero,  Paul  Dewar,  weds  his  childhood 
sweetheart,  Sue  Moyer,  and,  as  is  to  be  expected,  be 
comes  a  general  in  the  Civil  War.  After  the  war, 
impressed  with  the  abundance  of  hickory  in  his  locality, 
the  Carolinas,  he  starts  a  handle  factory  which  lasts 
until  the  panic  of  1873.  Discouraged  by  this  disaster, 
he  attempts  to  take  his  own  life;  but  the  bullet,  after 
seriously  wounding  him,  conveniently  leaves  its  mark 
upon  a  stone  which  he,  a  student  of  geology,  has  col 
lected,  together  with  many  other  relics,  from  an  Indian 
mound  dubbed  "Mamelon."  The  stone  thus  happily 
scarred  by  the  providential  bit  of  lead  is  found  to  con 
tain  corundum,  and  the  New  York  Corundum  Com 
pany  eventually  becomes  as  successful  as  one  wishes 


56  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

that  the  North  Carolina  Handle  Company  might  have 
become.  The  French  ancestry  of  the  hero,  who,  though 
not  as  usual  a  lawyer,  is  persuaded  by  his  wife  to 
study  law,  together  with  his  final  abundant  success, 
and  the  features  already  mentioned,  all  combine  to 
make  a  largely  autobiographic  and  almost  completely 
uninspired  tale,  which  by  no  means  implies  that  it  does 
not  make,  entertaining  reading. 

A  letter-head  found  in  Tourgee's  personal  effects 
witnesses  that  during  the  winter  of  1875-6  he  had 
found  a  new  means  of  remuneration,  in  which  he  was 
ever  after  intermittently  engaged.  He  gave  lectures  on 
the  following  topics :  'The  Coming  Crusade"  ;  "Today 
in  Account  with  Yesterday";  "Out  of  the  Strong- 
Sweetness"  ;  "The  Ben  Adhemite  Era" ;  and  "Southern 
Humor."  A  copy  of  the  "Ben  Adhemite  Era"  only  has 
been  found,  which,  based  on  Leigh  Hunt's  familiar 
poem,  paints  the  future  in  glowing  colors ;  but  it  may 
safely  be  inferred  from  the  titles  that  most  of  the  other 
lectures  dealt  with  the  Reconstruction  Period  as  well. 
This  letter-head  also  states  that  the  lectures  were  to 
be  given  by  "Albion  W.  Tourgee,  Late  Judge  of  the 
Superior  Court,"  and  the  "Author  of  Toinette'"; 
hence  it  appears  that  by  this  time  "Henry  Churton"' 
had  dropped  his  false  garments  and  assumed  genuine 
judicial  robes,  although  as  late  as  1875,  before  reveal 
ing  himself  to  the  public,  "Henry  Churton"  still  wrote 
numerous  articles  to  Southern  newspapers,  which  at 
tempted  to  show  that  the  policy  of  Reconstruction  was 
a  failure. 

The  residence  at  Raleigh  saw  the  production  of 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  52 

Tourgee's  final  literary  labors  completed  in  the  South. 
Two  were  of  a  similar  kind  and  were  work  of  a 
technically  legal  nature.  "The  Code  of  Civil  Procedure 
of  North  Carolina  with  Notes  and  Decisions,"  and  "A 
Digest  of  Cited  Cases  in  the  North  Carolina  Reports/' 
were  both  copyrighted  February  9,  1878.  The  preface 
to  the  former  volume  states  that  the  "object  of  this 
volume  is  to  enable  the  professional  reader  more  easily, 
quickly  and  certainly  to  ascertain  what  is  the  law  in 
regard  to  practice  in  Civil  Action  and  Special  Plead 
ings."  Tourgee  received  many  letters  of  praise  for 
the  production  of  this  useful  book,  which  cost  him 
much  hard  labor.  It  was  of  course  written  specifically 
for  North  Carolina  lawyers,  as  was  the  "Digest  of 
Cited  Cases,"  of  which  there  was  an  edition  of  six 
hundred  copies  which  sold  for  twelve  dollars  each. 

During  this  same  year,  The  North  State,  a  paper 
in  Greensboro,  published  weekly  from  March  18  to 
May  28,  and  then  irregularly  until  August  12,  the  "C" 
letters,  which  occasioned  a  really  huge  amount  of 
speculation  in  both  North  and  South  as  to  their  author 
ship  and  pertinence.  These  letters,  which  occupied 
about  two  large  newspaper  columns  and  always  closed, 
"We  shall  see.  'C',"  were  distinctly  journalistic  in 
tone,  being  written  in  homely,  popular  style,  despite 
frequent  poetical  and  classical  quotations.  They -con 
sisted  of  attacks  against  the  Ku  Klux,  defenses  of  the 
negro,  and  much  satire  directed  against  Democratic 
candidates  for  political  offices,  particularly  the  bench. 
The  intense  partisanship,  inexcusable  personal  scurril 
ity  and  mud-slinging  which  were  everywhere  present  in 


58  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

them,  together  with  their  graphic  style,  caused  several 
papers  to  rank  them  even  higher  than  the  notorious 
"Letters  of  Junius."  One  person  especially  attacked 
in  them,  Judge  Fowle  of  Raleigh,  suspected  that 
Tourgee  was  the  author;  and,  chancing  to  meet  him 
one  day  on  the  streets  of  Raleigh,  directly  accused  him 
of  the  authorship  and  followed  his  charge  with  a 
shower  of  fisticuffs,  to  which  Tourgee  promptly 
retaliated.  He  suffered  more  than  his  justly  furious 
antagonist  in  this  brachial  contest,  as  his  discolored 
countenance  indicated  for  some  time,  although  his 
epistolary  accounts  of  this  affair  stoutly  maintain  the 
contrary.  After  this  occurrence  became  known,  it  was 
no  longer  possible  for  "C"  to  hide  his  identity  from 
a  long  curious  public. 

Tourgee's  period  of  residence  in  the  South  was  now 
nearly  ended.  Hatred  against  him  had  been  steadily 
waxing  stronger  ever  since  his  arrival  there;  and  by 
1879  he  was  satisfied  that  the  only  sensible  course  for 
him  to  pursue  was  to  return  to  the  section  for  which 
he  had  fought  and  had  always  defended  by  tongue  and 
pen.  During  the  summer  of  1879  he  spent  his  time 
in  closing  his  business  affairs,  and  in  die  month  of 
August  he  and  his  family  boarded  a  New  York  train, 
incidentally  taking  several  uncompleted  manuscripts, 
one  of  which,  about  to  appear  in  printed  form,  was 
destined  soon  to  make  his  name  "known  to  almost 
every  household/'  as  a  convenient  expression  has  it. 


CHAPTER  III 
"A  FOOL'S  ERRAND" 

THE  New  York  Tribune,  September  3,  1879,  de 
voted  one  and  a  half  columns  of  its  front  page  to  an 
interview  granted  by  Tourgee  to  one  of  its  reporters 
on  his  return  North.  In  this  interview  Tourgee  defi 
nitely  states  that  he  had  returned  to  a  more  congenial 
atmosphere  because  of  Southern  antagonism  to  all 
things  Northern,  and  particularly  because  of  its  mani 
festations  of  hatred  against  himself.  His  whereabouts 
for  the  next  three  months  are  not  definitely  known, 
but  it  is  certain  that  most  of  this  time  was  spent  in 
New  York  attending  to  the  publication  of  the  two 
books  which  will  now  be  considered  in  detail.  Al 
though  "Figs  and  Thistles"  appeared  a  month  and  a 
half  earlier  than  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  the  greater 
historical  importance  of  the  latter  work  makes  it  ad 
visable  to  discuss  it  first. 

On  October  4,  1879,  the  following  notice  appeared 
in  the  advertising  pages  of  the  New  York  Tribune: 
"Published  This  Day.  Figs  and  Thistles.  .  .  .  Ready 
shortly,  A  Fool's  Errand.  Fords,  Howard  and  Hul- 
bert."  On  November  10,  the  Literary  Notes  depart 
ment  in  the  Tribune  contained  this  item:  "The  ad- 

59 


60  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

vance  demand  for  'A  Fool's  Errand*  has  been  so  great 
that  Fords,  Howard  and  Hulbert  have  decided  to  de 
lay  the  publication  of  it  until  November  15,  in  order 
to  prepare  a  larger  edition."  And  on  that  date  the  same 
paper  contained  another  advertisement  stating  that  "A 
Fool's  Errand,  by  One  of  the  Fools,"  could  be  pur 
chased  at  all  bookstores  or  at  the  publishers.  The  book 
which  the  public  was  thus  anticipating,  and  which  it 
has  since  generally  regarded  as  the  first  literary  effort 
dealing  with  the  Reconstruction  Era;  the  book  also 
which  for  the  next  few  months  was  probably  the  most 
discussed  American  novel  of  the  day;  and  the  book 
which  was  undoubtedly  Tourgee's  most  successful 
work,  at  any  rate  so  far  as  earnings  and  popularity  are 
concerned,  certainly  deserves  considerable  attention. 

He  himself  has  told  how  it  came  to  be  written,  in  a 
personal  letter  from  Bordeaux,  August  24,  1903. 
"Early  on  a  Sunday  morning  in  the  month  of  July, 
1877,  in  the  city  of  Raleigh,  .  .  .  after  a  sleepless 
night  spent  in  restless  review  of  events  which  had  oc 
curred  since  the  close  of  the  war  of  the  Rebellion, 
especially  in  regard  to  the  relations  of  Northern  and 
Southern  ideas,  I  -wakened  my  wife  and  said,  *I  am  go 
ing  to  write  a  book  and  call  it  "A  Fool's  Errand".'  I 
immediately  arose,  went  into  an  adjoining  room  and 
that  day  wrote  three  chapters  of  that  work."  This  story 
may  be  continued  by  a  passage  taken  from  the  Personal. 
column  of  the  Tribune,  April  22,  1881,  in  which 
Tourgee  is  quoted  thus :  "I  laid  it  [the  manuscript  of 
these  three  chapters]  away  and  did  not  take  it  up  again 
till- June,  1879,  when  the  printing  began.  One  chapter 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  61 

I  wrote  twenty  times,  and  tore  it  down  out  of  the  type 
three  times.  Each  time  I  threw  my  manuscript  into 
the  fire  and  entirely  rewrote  the  chapter.  I  could  never 
patch  up."  Apropos  of  the  above,  it  may  be  remarked 
that  Tourgee  very  frequently  rewrote  his  different 
articles  several  times,  to  the  constant  despair  of  his 
wife,  who  was  thus  obliged  to  re-copy  them  a  like  num 
ber  of  times,  and  that  he  often  wrote  only  in  time  to 
keep  the  printers  busy. 

So  much  for  the  actual  composition  of  the  tale. 
In  the  preface  of  "Hot  Plowshares/1  May,  1883, 
Tourgee  first  discusses  the  serial  idea  that  underlay  the 
writing  of  six  of  his  novels:  "Many  years  ago  the 
author  conceived  the  idea  that  he  might  aid  some  of 
his  fellow-countrymen  and  country-women  to  a  juster 
comprehension  of  these  things  [Northern  and  South 
ern  divergences]  by  a  series  of  works  which  should 
give,  in  the  form  of  fictitious  narrative,  the  effects  of 
these  distinct  and  contrasted  civilizations  upon  various 
types  of  characters  and  during  specific  periods  of  the 
great  transition.  Beginning  their  preparation  in  1867, 
...  he  has  worked  patiently  and  honestly  and  zeal 
ously  to  complete  his  analysis  of  the  representative 
groups  of  characters.  .  .  .  The  period  covered  by  the 
now  completed  series  of  six  volumes  extends  from 
twenty  years  before  the  war  until  twelve  years  after  it. 
...  In  chronological  order  they  would  stand  as  fol 
lows  :  'Hot  Plowshares',  'Figs  and  Thistles',  'A  Royal 
Gentleman',  'A  Fool's  Errand',  'Bricks  Without 
Straw',  'John  Eax'."  As  has  been  true  with  more 
than  one  author  of  a  series  of  novels,  it  is  highly  prob- 


62  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

able  that  this  conception  was  by  no  means  as  clear  in 
Tourgee's  mind  in  1867  as  it  was  in  1883;  for  his 
wife,  in  a  letter  to  The  Buffalo  Express,  October  14, 
1908,  lays  much  emphasis  upon  the  fact  that  Tourgee 
did  not  want  to  write  any  more  books  dealing  with 
Southern  conditions  after  writing  "A  Fool's  Errand," 
for  he  feared  that  he  would  merely  repeat  what  he  had 
already  written.  His  publishers,  however,  insisted, 
and  he  finally  yielded  to  their  importunity. 

The  book  has  its  title  because  its  hero  goes  through 
almost  identically  the  same  experiences  that  Tourgee 
himself  had  undergone,  and  comes  to  the  conclusion 
which  he  had  come  to,  that  the  attempt  of  the  North 
to  superimpose  its  type  of  civilization  upon  the  South 
was  a  "fool's  errand."  The  title  was  chosen  also  with 
an  eye  to  possible  pecuniary  profit,  for  we  are  told 
that  "the  writer  believed  that  the  form  of  the  title 
would  constitute  one  of  those  pleasant  literary  conun 
drums  which  have  a  distinct  market  value,  and  would 
consequently  enhance  the  sale  of  the  book."  *  Its  story 
is  a  picture  of  the  aftermath  of  the  Civil  War  in  the 
South,  and  the  effects  upon  two  civilizations  of  that 
mighty  upheaval.  The  similarity  of  its  hero  to  Tourgee 
is  even  more  pronounced  than  in  any  of  his  other 
books.  Comfort  Servosse,  of  French  ancestry,  whose 
family  moves  west  near  Detroit,  is  a  college  graduate 
and  a  lawyer.  In  the  cause  of  the  North  he  becomes 
a  brigadier-general,  but  loses  his  health  and  hence  de 
cides  to  go  South  with  his  wife  (Metta  Ward  before 
marriage)  and  small  daughter,  to  practise  law.  There 

1  Our  Continent,  Vol.  V,  p.  604. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  63 

he  is  elected  delegate  to  the  Constitutional  Convention 
of  his  state,  and  works  for  the  same  reforms  which 
Tourgee  had  advocated  in  the  Convention  of  1868. 
His  life  is  often  endangered  by  the  Ku  Klux,  and  he 
loses  the  sympathy  of  nearly  all  save  the  negroes  and 
carpet-baggers.  Metta  is  clearly  enough  modeled  on 
Mrs.  Tourgee,  and  the  Reverend  Enos  Martin,  Ser- 
vosse's  former  college  president,  is  with  little  doubt  a 
picture  of  M.  B.  Anderson,  President  of  Rochester 
University.  There  is  also  a  suspicious  resemblance 
between  the  negro,  Jerry  Hunt,  and  Mrs.  Stowe's 
Uncle  Tom.  Tourgee  often  angrily  denied  that  any 
of  the  characters  in  his  stories  had  flesh-and-blood 
prototypes,  but  this  denial  is  of  as  little  value  as  his 
constant  reiteration  that  the  chief  merit  of  his  stories 
is  their  "honest,  uncompromising  truthfulness  of 
portraiture,"  as  the  preface  to  "A  Fool's  Errand"  puts 
it.  This  apparent  "truthfulness  of  portraiture"  was 
without  doubt  largely  responsible  for  the  great  popular 
ity  of  the  book;  but,  like  many  other  generalizations 
avidly  accepted  by  the  public,  it  is  founded  on  the 
sands. 

Tourgee  makes  much  use  of  the  Richardsonian  de 
vice  of  letters,  and  constantly  interrupts  the  really 
powerful  narrative  with  disquisitions  on  history,  curses 
loud  but  not  always  deep  against  the  Northern  policy 
of  Reconstruction,  attacks  on  the  South,  and  exuberant 
praise  of  the  negro.  These  interruptions,  indeed,  al 
most  spoil  the  story  as  a  story,  since  their  frequent 
recurrences  are  so  excessively  irritating  to  the  reader. 
The  best  narrative  is  contained  in  the  chapter  "A  Race 


64  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

Against  Time,"  in  which  Lily  Servosse  on  her  high- 
mettled  steed  saves  her  father's  life  from  the  Ku  Klux, 
in  the  nick  of  time  of  course,  for  as  usual  the  several 
crises  in  the  tale  are  happily  manipulated  by  coin 
cidence.  There  is  much  grisly  "realism  in  the  scenes 
where  the  ravages  of  the  Ku  Klux  are  shown.  The 
dialogue  is  fairly  life-like,  but  the  story,  like  Tourgee's 
other  novels,  is  prevailingly  deficient  in  humor,  despite, 
or  rather  because  of,  his  conscious  attempts  to  attain  it; 
it  was  in  his  letters,  when  he  was  not  taking  himself 
seriously  as  he  always  does  in  his  novels,  that  there 
is  often  cause  for  real  mirth.  The  story  contains  the 
usual  sentimental  elements  in  the  relation  between 
Servosse's  daughter,  Lily,  and  Melville  Gurney,  son 
of  a  Confederate  general.  These  young  people,  after 
surmounting  the  customary  obstacles  strewn  upon  the 
course  of  their  true  love,  are  happily  united  by  the 
death  of  Servosse,  an  event  which  causes  the  heart 
of  the  ex-Confederate  general  to  relinquish  its  hatred 
toward  a  "carpet-bagger"  daughter-in-law.  Yet  in 
spite  of  the  obvious  faults  which  are  inherent  in  this 
novel,  as  in  others  of  its  kind,  the  story  really  grips,  as 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  grips,  because  in  each  case  the 
author  had  a  burning  message  to  give  the  world. 

And  it  is  the  message  of  "A  Fool's  Errand"  that  is 
of  chief  importance,  to  which  the  largely  artificial 
narrative  was  merely  a  means  of  attracting  public  at 
tention. 

On  March  2,  1867, tne  Reconstruction  Act  had  gone 
into  operation,  which  was  to  be  the  Northern  policy 
toward  the  South  for  the  next  ten  years.  "This  famous 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  65 

law  consisted  of  two  parts :  five  of  its  six  sections  pro 
vided  for  the  establishment  and  administration  of  a 
rigorous  and  comprehensive  military  government 
throughout  the  ten  states  not  yet  restored  to  the  Union; 
while  the  remaining  section,  the  fifth,  declared  that 
the  restoration  of  the  states  should  be  effected  only 
after  reorganization,  on  the  basis  of  general  negro  en 
franchisement  and  limited  rebel  disfranchisement."  * 
That  this  policy  was  short-sighted  and  fatally  destruc 
tive  of  the  very  objects  it  sought  to  attain,  the  next  ten 
years  amply  demonstrated.  Tourgee  himself  has  in 
dicated  what  its  immediate  effect  was.  "So  the  line 
of  demarcation  was  drawn.  Upon  the  one  side  were 
found  only  those  who  constituted  what  was  termed 
respectable  people, — the  bulk  of  those  of  the  white  race 
who  had  ruled  the  South  in  the  ante  bellum  days,  who 
had  fostered  slavery,  and  been  fattened  by  it,  who  had 
made  it  the  dominant  power  in  the  nation,  together 
with  the  mass  of  those  whose  courage  and  capacity 
had  organized  rebellion,  and  led  the  South  in  that 
marvelous  struggle  for  separation.  On  the  other  side 
were  the  pariahs  of  the  land,  to  designate  the  different 
classes  of  which  three  words  were  used:  'Niggers/ 
the  new-enfranchised  African  voters;  'Scalawags/ 
the  native  whites  who  were  willing  to  accept  the  re 
construction  measures;  and  'Carpet-baggers/  all  men 
of  Northern  birth,  resident  in  the  South,  who  should 
elect  to  speak  or  act  in  favor  of  such  reconstruction" 
(pp.  124-5).  Tourgee  had,  in  the  Convention  of  1868, 

*  "Reconstruction  Political  and  Social,"  by  W.  A.  Dunning, 
p.  93- 


66  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

insisted  upon  the  following  reforms  which  the  hero  of 
the  story  also  advocates :  ( i )  Equal  civil  and  political 
rights  for  all  men;  (2)  Abolition  of  property  qualifi 
cations  for  voters,  officers  and  jurors;  (3)  Election  by 
the  people  of  all  officers;  (4)  Penal  reform — the 
abolition  of  the  whipping-post,  the  stocks  and  the 
branding-iron,  and  the  reduction  of  capital  crimes 
from  seventeen  to  one  or  at  most  two;  (5)  A  uniform 
system  of  taxation;  (6)  An  effective  system  of  public 
schools  (p.  141).  In  other  words,  Tourgee  was  in 
1868,  before  reaping  the  results  of  his  "fool's  errand," 
a  firm  believer  in  the  Northern  policy  of  Reconstruc 
tion.  He  had,  as  he  says,  "no  idea  that  he  was  com 
mitting  an  enormity ;  but  from  that  day  he  became  an 
outlaw  in  the  land  where  he  had  hoped  to  have  made 
a  home,  and  which  he  desired  faithfully  to  serve" 

(p.  141). 

But  bitter  experience  taught  him  the  folly  of  thus 
trying  to  force  a  proud,  aristocratic  people  to  accept  a 
system  of  government  so  utterly  opposed  to  all  their 
traditions;  and  at  the  end  of  his  Southern  residence 
he  came  to  believe  that  only  the  enforcement  of  4he 
sixth  item  in  the  above  list  would  produce  the  results 
desired  in  the  North.  He  first  formulated  this  definite 
educational  policy,  a  policy  to  which  he  devoted  the 
larger  part  of  his  time  for  the  next  ten  years  or  more, 
at  the  end  of  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  where  his  mouth 
piece,  Servosse,  states  the  fundamental  error  of  the  Re 
construction  Act,  and  its  remedy :  "We  tried  to  super 
impose  the  civilization,  the  idea  of  the  North,  upon  the 
South  at  a  moment's  warning.  ...  So  we  tried  to 


ALBION  W*  TOURGEE  67 

build  up  communities  there  which  should  be  identical  in 
thought,  sentiment,  growth,  and  development,  with 
those  of  the  North.  It  was  A  FOOL'S  ERRAND"  (p. 
341).  The  remedy  for  this  state  of  affairs,  according 
to  Tourgee,  cannot  come  from  within  but  must  come 
from  without.  "The  Nation  nourished  and  protected 
slavery.  .  .  .  Now  let  the  Nation  undo  the  evil  it  has  per 
mitted  and  encouraged.  Let  it  educate  those  whom  it 
made  ignorant,  and  protect  those  whom  it  made  weak. 
It  is  not  a  matter  of  favor  to  the  black,  but  of  safety 
to  the  Nation.  Make  the  spelling-book  the  scepter  of 
national  power.  Let  the  Nation  educate  the  colored 
man  and  the  poor-white  man  because  the  Nation  held 
them  in  bondage,  and  is  responsible  for  their  education ; 
educate  the  voter  because  the  Nation  cannot  afford  that 
he  should  be  ignorant"  (pp.  346-7).  In  this  book 
Tourgee  thus  merely  indicates  the  general  remedy;  he 
was  shortly  to  argue  for  the  specific  educational  meth 
ods  which  he  regarded  as  necessary  to  effect  the  results 
which  the  Reconstruction  policy  had  failed  to  attain. 

Scarcely  had  this  book  been  given  by  the  press  to 
an  already  expectant  public  when  the  first  edition  was 
sold,  and  for  the  next  year  edition  after  edition  fol 
lowed  in  almost  bi-monthly  succession.  The  New  York 
Tribune  in  its  Literary  Notes,  December  3,  1879, 
makes  the  following  comment:  "Few  works  of  the 
day  have  had  a  more  rapid  and  immediate  success  than 
'A  Fool's  Errand'  now  enjoys.  No  book  on  the  shop 
counters  sells  better  and  the  fame  of  it  has  been  carried 
on  the  wings  of  newspapers  into*  every  State  if  not 
county  in  the  land.  Its  reception  in  the  South  has  not 


68  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE     . 

been  of  the  most  cordial  kind,  though  the  merit  of  it 
as  a  composition  is  not  denied."    This  statement  is  al 
most  literally  true.     Scores  of  Northern  newspapers 
spoke  in  the  most  extravagant  praise  of  the  book's 
literary  worth.    Ulysses  S.  Grant  at  this  time  delivered 
a  speech  in  which  he  casually  made  a  favorable  refer 
ence  to  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  and  on  the  following  day 
the  firm  of  Fords,  Howard  and  Hulbert  was  deluged 
with  a  shower  of  telegrams  requesting  copies  of  the 
book.     The  unknown  author  was  heralded   as  the 
"Victor  Hugo  of  America,"  and  many  prophecies  were 
made  that  the  "great  American  novelist"  had  at  last 
arrived.     Harper's  Magazine  contained  perhaps  the 
most  adequate  and  restrained  contemporary  criticism. 
"It  can  scarcely  be  called  a  love  story.  ...  It  is 
rather  an  earnest  and  at  times  passionate  philippic  in 
narrative  form  against  the  reconstruction  policy.  .  .  . 
The  volume  is  one-sided,  but  intensely  in  earnest."  x 
Its  Northern  popularity  was  of  course  not  reflected  in 
the  South.     A  letter  from  the  New  Orleans  Custom 
House,  December  22,  1879,  informed  the  publishers 
that  the  book  was  not  on  sale  there  because  Southern 
sentiment  was  against  it,  and  hence  sale  by  subscription 
only  was  advisable.   The  Raleigh  Observer  grudgingly 
admitted  that  the  story  "is  a  powerfully  written  work, 
and  destined,  we  fear,  to  do  as  much  harm  in  the  world 
as  'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin/  to  which  it  is,  indeed,  a  com 
panion  piece."    Meanwhile  speculation  as  to  the  author 
was  rife.   The  Literary  Notes  in  the  New  York  Trib 
une,  January  24,  1880,  hazards  the  following  guess: 
1  Harper's  Magazine,  February,  1880,  p.  472. 


.     ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  69 

"The  list  of  persons  to  whom  has  been  attributed  the 
authorship  of  'A  Fool's  Errand*  grows  apace.  [Some  of 
those  mentioned  by  the  Tribune  were :  the  governor  of 
South  Carolina,  General  Ames  of  Mississippi,  Edmund 
Kirk,  General  Joseph  Abbott,  Tourgee,  and  particu 
larly  Mrs.  Stowe.]  Evidently  the  author  does  not  wish 
to  be  known;  but  those  who  have  guessed  Judge 
Tourgee  can  afford  to  stick  to  their  guess."  As  late  as 
August  25,  1880,  the  same  paper  says:  "  'A  Fool's  Er 
rand'  is  still  selling  by  the  thousand,  and  the  publishers 
have  found  it  convenient  to  make  duplicate  plates  and 
print  simultaneously  in  New  York  and  Boston."  l 

Perhaps  it  will  be  well  to  see  what  unbiased  critics 
at  a  later  day  thought  of  this  book,  after  the  tumult 
and  shouting  of  contemporary  criticism  had  died  away 
and  the  story  was  almost  forgotten.  The  Bookman 
speaks  thus:  "Of  course  Judge  Tourgee' s  book  was 
not  to  be  compared  with  Mrs.  Stowe's.  Its  subject 

1  Accounts  of  sales  regularly  sent  to  Tourgee  by  Fords,  Howard 
and  Hulbert  indicate  that  most  of  the  claims  as  to  the  sale  of 
"A  Fool's  Errand"  were  exaggerated.  No  record  has  been 
found  of  the  number  of  copies  in  the  first  edition,  but  by 
January  I,  1880,  5281  copies  had  been  sold,  including  300  in 
England.  By  June  30,  1880,  43,653  copies  had  been  sold,  and 
by  December  31,  1880,  41,236  more.  In  1881  about  9000  copies 
were  disposed  of,  in  1882  about  2500,  and  from  that  time  on 
not  more  than  2000  copies  per  year.  It  would  thus  seem  that  the 
total  sale  was  not  much  more  than  100,000  copies,  but  there 
appear  to  have  been  several  pirated  editions  both  in  this  country 
and  in  England;  at  any  rate,  Tourgee  made  this  charge  several 
times,  and  was  always  bitter  against  both  national  and  inter 
national  copyright  laws.  It  is  thus  possible  that  the  total  sales 
of  the  book  may  have  neared  the  200,000  mark,  for  some  25,000 
copies  of  "A  Fool's  Errand"  were  sold  in  the  same  volume  with 
"The  Invisible  Empire." 


70  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

made  a  more  limited  appeal;  its  author  had  no  such 
emotional  power  as  hers ;  and  many  chapters,  especially 
toward  the  end,  read  like  political  tracts.  Yet  none  the 
less,  here  is  the  most  powerful  and  moving  story  of  the 
Reconstruction  period  that  has  yet  been  written."1 
The  Arena  has  this  comment,  relative  to  a  new  edition 
of  "A  FooVs  Errand" :  "In  our  judgment  'A  Fool's 
Errand*  is  the  most  valuable  historical  contribution  to 
the  Reconstruction  period  that  romance  literature  has 
yet  given  us.  ...  Aside  from  its  historical  value,  'A 
Fool's  Errand'  is  a  beautiful  romance  and  an  im 
portant,  contribution  to  American  fiction  that  merits  a 
permanent  place  in  literature."2  Professor  C.  Alphonso 
Smith,  in  his  "O.  Henry  Biography,"  says:  "After 
reading  many  special  treatises  and  university  disserta 
tions  on  the  kind  of  Reconstruction  attempted  in  the 
South  I  find  in  The  Fool's  Errand'  the  wisest  state 
ment  of  the  whole  question  yet  made."  8 

The  mystery  of  the  authorship  of  the  story  was 
definitely  settled  in  the  summer  of  1880  when,  on  May 
22,  "The  Invisible  Empire"  appeared,  bound  in  the 
same  volume  as  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  with  Tourgee's 
name  on  the  title  page  as  author  of  both  works.  "The 
Invisible  Empire"  aims  to  do  about  what  Mrs.  Stowe's 
"A  Key  to  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  had  done;  that  is, 
present  the  public  with  authenticated  records  of  events, 
which,  though  not  precisely  those  narrated  in  the  re 
spective  tales,  were  yet  almost  exact  analogies.  The 

1  Bookman,  July,  1905,  pp.  4S&-9- 

*  Arena,  September,  1902,  pp.  333-4- 

*  "O.  Henry  Biography,"  p.  63. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  71 

volume  cites  many  cases  of  Ku  Klux  outrages,  and 
closes  with  an  appeal  emphasizing  the  necessity  of 
national  education  as  the  basis  of  real  reconstruction. 
It  was  printed  only  as  a  joint  work  with  "A  Fool's 
Errand/'  and  was  sold  only  by  subscription  at  two 
dollars  per  volume.  Over  twenty  thousand  copies  were 
sold  in  the  first  half  year  of  its  existence. 

As  has  already  been  mentioned,  "Figs  and  Thistles," 
the  second  in  the  series  of  six  Reconstruction  novels, 
appeared  on  October  4,  1879.  Since  it  preceded  the 
publication  of  the  vastly  more  popular  "A  Fool's 
Errand"  by  less  than  a  month  and  a  half,  it  attracted 
much  less  attention.  Furthermore,  it  dealt  not  at  all 
with  Reconstruction  problems,  but  its  events  took  place 
wholly  in  the  North;  more  particularly,  the  scenes  of 
action  are  mostly  in  Ohio,  and  Tourgee  himself  said 
that  in  this  story  he  paid  a  debt  of  love  to  his  childhood 
home.  The  period  of  time  covered  is  1850-1872. 
Markham  Churr,  the  chief  figure  in  the  tale,  embodies 
the  usual  autobiographical  qualities  of  a  Tourgee 
hero :  he  is  a  college  graduate,  a  lawyer,  and  a  soldier 
in  the  Union  cause.  Of  special  similitude  is  the  wound 
ing  of  Churr  in  the  Battle  of  Bull  Run,  his  consequent 
confinement  in  a  private  house  in  Washington,  his 
slow  recovery  in  his  Ohio  home  in  the  spring  of  1862, 
and  his  return  to  the  army.  Eventually  he  attains  the 
rank  of  brigadier-general,  luckily  inherits  a  large  for 
tune,  and  is  sent  to  Congress ;  these  were  honors  which 
Tourgee  never  attained,  but  his  heroes  are  always  a 
combination  of  genuine  similarity  to  himself,  plus  sev 
eral  higher  attainments  of  which  he  apparently  deemed 


72  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

himself  amply  worthy.  Many  critics  thought  that  this 
story  was  intended  to  be  a  life  of  James  A.  Garfield, 
here  concealed  as  Markham  Churr;  but  this  theory  is 
rendered  unlikely,  not  so  much  because  Tourgee  denied 
that  it  was  true  as  because  Churr  is  so  obviously  a 
picture  of  himself.  Sentiment,  mystery,  coincidence, 
and  absurdly  impossible  character  somersaults  appear 
in  the  customary  abundance  throughout  the  tale.  The 
"Syllabus  Personarum"  in  the  preface  makes  far  more 
entertaining  reading  than  the  story  itself,  which  as 
usual  is  devoid  of  humor  and  contains,  like  most  novels 
of  its  type,  a  sentimental  sop  for  the  public  at  the  end, 
for  virtue  is  rewarded  and  vice  punished  with  the  most 
exasperating  mechanical  inevitability. 

During  this  time  Tourgee  was  a  man  of  affairs  as 
well  as  a  novelist.  After  the  stay  in  New  York  in  the 
autumn  of  1879,  where  he  was  writing,  consulting  with 
his  publishers,  and  doubtless  very  happy  in  the  thought 
of  the  fame  that  would  be  his  when  "One  of  the  Fools" 
should  reveal  himself  to  an  expectant  public,  he  de 
parted  to  a  new  field.  Although  his  bank  account  was 
rapidly  swelling  to  a  size  far  greater  than  ever  pre 
viously,  he  had  been  looking  about  for  some  occupation 
more  certain  of  steady  financial  reward  than  literature. 
After  refusing  an  offer  to  enter  a  prominent  law  firm 
in  New  York,  he  decided  to  make  a  second  migration 
to  a  far  country.  This  time  it  was  the  swiftly  expand 
ing  West  that  attracted  him,  and  some  time  during 
December  the  Tourgee  family  left  for  Denver. 

Arriving  there,  he  at  once  sought  an  opening  in  his 
chosen  profession,  but  none  was  available.  An  offer 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  73 

was  at  once  made  him,  however,  by  the  publisher  of 
The  Denver  Times  to  assume  the  editorial  manage 
ment  of  the  evening  edition.  Since  this  appeared  to 
be  fairly  satisfactory,  Tourgee  accepted,  meanwhile 
keeping  an  eye  open  for  an  opportunity  to  practise  law. 
But  he  was  not  destined  to  remain  in  Denver  long, 
either  as  a  newspaperman  or  as  a  lawyer,  for  early  in 
1880  his  publishers  wrote  a  letter  importuning  him  to 
come  East  and  supervise  a  new  edition  of  "A  Fool's 
Errand."  This  he  did,  and  again  went  to  Denver  to 
continue  his  journalistic  work.  But  before  many 
weeks  he  received  a  most  urgent  request  from  his  pub 
lishers  to  write  another  book  in  the  same  vein  as  "A 
Fool's  Errand."  He  at  first  refused  to  do  this,  because, 
as  has  already  been  noted,  he  thought  it  would  be 
merely  a  repetition  of  the  former  book  and  might  there 
fore  fail.  But  finally  he  sent  his  publishers  eight  or 
ten  chapters  of  "Bricks  without  Straw,"  another  story 
that  had  been  begun  in  'the  South.  The  publishers 
found  the  chapters  satisfactory  and  he  began  to  finish 
the  story  in  Denver,  but  for  some  reason  was  unable 
to  write  effectively,  and  so  started  East  again,  probably 
in  May,  in  search  of  inspiration.  He  was  in  Canada 
for  a  short  time,  hoping  to  feel  there  a  mood  for  writ 
ing,  and  incidentally  seeking  the  British  copyright  for 
the  forthcoming  story.  By  the  middle  of  July  he  tele 
graphed  his  wife,  requesting  her  to  close  up  his  busi 
ness  affairs  in  Denver  and  come  East.  Thus  ended  the 
brief  Western  experience,  and  for  the  next  six  months 
their  home  was  in  New  York  where  he  rapidly  finished 
the  new  novel,  of  which  the  first  edition  of  twenty-five 


74  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

thousand  copies  appeared  in  the  first  week  of  October, 
with  "By  the  Author  of  A  Fool's  Errand"  in  a  con 
spicuous  place  on  the  outside  cover. 

The  book  took  its  title  from  Exodus  5,  18:  "Go 
therefore  now,  and  work ;  for  there  shall  no  straw  be 
given  you,  yet  shall  ye  deliver  the  tale  of  bricks."  In 
this  book,  fifth  in  point  of  time  in  the  series  of  Re 
construction  novels,  "some  aspects  of  the  present  con 
dition  of  the  colored  race  (1880)  and  their  relations 
to  the  whites  in  the  great  matters  of  Labor  and  Educa 
tion  afford  still  another  point  of  view,  and  present 
still  new  types  of  character  and  romantic  interest,"  as 
the  preface  to  "A  Royal  Gentleman"  states.  Despite 
this  claim  for  novelty,  there  is  really  little  in  the  book 
that  had  not  already  been  presented  in  preceding  tales ; 
for  Yankee  school  teachers,  idealized  negroes,  and 
theories  of  national  education  had  already  character 
ized  previous  works.  It  does  differ  from  "Figs  and 
Thistles"  and  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  however,  in  that  it 
has  less  of  an  autobiographical  nature;  for  the  hero, 
Hesden  Le  Moyne,  is  a  Southern  man  with  accompany 
ing  prejudices.  His  French  ancestry  is  significant, 
however,  and  he  had  voted  in  favor  of  the  new  State 
Constitution  of  1868;  moreover,  he  is  finally  converted 
entirely  to  the  Northern  point  of  view,  both  by  his 
wife,  a  New  England  school  mistress  who  had  become 
a  "carpet-bagger"  teacher,  and  by  his  own  observations 
of  the  injustice  done  to  the  negro  through  the  short 
sighted  Reconstruction  policy.  Furthermore,  he  be 
comes  Tourgee's  mouthpiece  in  the  closing  chapters, 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  75 

where  for  the  first  time  education  is  not  only  advanced 
as  the  sovereign  remedy  for  the  solution  of  Recon 
struction  problems,  but  a  specific  method  is  offered  to 
attain  this  end :  a  fund  of  money  for  educational  pur 
poses  is  to  be  distributed  by  the  government  in  propor 
tion  to  the  illiteracy  of  different  communities ;  in  other 
words,  national  supervision  of  state  schools  is  ad 
vocated. 

In  other  respects,  however,  the  story  is  largely  a 
repetition  of  previous  books,  with  its  convenient  dis 
regard  of  most  of  the  laws  of  probability  (as  evinced 
by  several  miraculous  coincidences),  its  stirring  scenes 
of  Ku  Klux  Klan  depredations,  its  element  of  mystery 
with  an  accompanying  inept  solution,  its  pathetically 
conventional  romanticism,  its  legal  and  economic  dis 
cussions,  and  its  strong  denunciations  of  Southern 
civilization  and  Northern  inability  to  face  facts.  Both 
its  strength  and  weakness  are  sufficiently  pointed  out 
in  the  Dial,  which  said  that  the  Northern  women  who 
went  South  probably  "did  not  as  a  usual  thing  enter 
on  their  lonely  and  perilous  task  at  the  childish  age  of 
seventeen;  and  did  not  invariably  become  at  once  the 
daring  riders  of  glossy  steeds,  each  endowed  with  the 
strength,  and  speed  of  a  locomotive,  the  tricks  of  a 
circus-mule,  and  the  intelligence,  docility  and  affection- 
ateness  of  a  sheep-dog.  The  strength  of  the  book  lies 
in  its  true-seeming  portraiture  of  the  lower  order  of 
characters;  its  rapid  and  thrillingly  graphic  narration 
of  incidents  both  terrible  and  grotesque;  and  its  tear- 
compelling  descriptions  of  the  sufferings  of  a  hapless 


76  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

and  helpless  race  of  beings."  *  Two  weeks  after  the 
book  was  placed  on  sale,  the  publishers  found  it  neces 
sary  to  make  a  duplicate  set  of  plates  to  keep  up  with 
the  demand.  Their  report  to  Tourgee  on  December 
31,  1880,  states  that  41,459  copies  had  already  been 
sold,  which  shows  that  its  sale  had  even  exceeded  that 
of  "A  Fool's  Errand"  for  a  period  of  similar  length. 

During  this  time,  other  matters  than  literature  were 
engaging  Tourgee's  attention.  He  could  never  resist 
the  temptation  to  engage  in  political  strife,  and  op 
portunity  was  afforded  him  in  the  summer  of  1880  to 
take  part  in  the  presidential  campaign  which  eventually 
resulted  in  the  election  of  Garfield.  It  so  happened 
that  Tourgee  had  been  acquainted  with  him  as  a  boy, 
for,  when  Tourgee  was  about  ten  years  old,  he  had 
visited  some  relatives  in  Chester,  Ohio,  and  one  of  the 
boarders  in  the  family  was  the  youthful  Garfield.  The 
future  president  showed  his  interest  in  young  Tourgee 
by  inviting  him  to  the  seminary  in  Chester,  where  the 
two  sang  from  the  same  song  book  during  chapel 
exercises ;  and  some  fishing  trips  taken  together  at  this 
time  resulted  in  a  fairly  intimate  boyhood  friendship. 
They  had  met  again  in  the  Civil  War,  and  there  re 
newed  their  youthful  acquaintance  for  a  short  time. 

On  the  journey  East,  in  the  summer  of  1880, 
Tourgee  had  stopped  off  at  the  Chicago  Convention 
and  once  more  met  Garfield,  who  had  read  and  en 
joyed  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  and  was  aware  that  the  book 
would  probably  have,  as  it  actually  did,  a  considerable 
amount  of  influence  in  the  campaign  of  1880,  by  plac- 

*Dial,  October,  1880,  pp.  110-112. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  77 

ing  Reconstruction  problems  before  the  public  in  a 
popular  form.1  Hence  it  was  not  surprising  that, 
after  being  nominated  for  the  presidency,  Garfield 
wrote  Tourgee  asking  him  to  assist  in  the  coming  cam 
paign.  He  eagerly  accepted  the  invitation,  and  that 
he  labored  regularly  at  haranguing  crowds  in  different 
parts  of  the  country  is  shown  by  various  speeches 
which  still  remain  in  manuscript  form,  and  also  by  the 
fact  that  he  almost  entirely  lost  his  voice  shortly  before 
the  election.  After  Garfield  had  triumphed  at  the 
polls,  Tourgee  sent  this  telegram:  "The  family  of 
fools  send  greeting."  To  it  Garfield  replied  in  a  letter : 
"Dear  Judge :  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  greeting  from 
the  'Family  of  Fools/  and  in  return  express  the  hope 
that  the  day  may  come  when  our  country  will  be  a 
paradise  for  all  such  fools."  Furthermore,  a  few 
weeks  after  his  election,  Garfield  wrote  Tourgee  asking 
his  opinion  as  to  what  effect  the  election  would  have 
on  the  "solid  South,"  to  which  Tourgee  replied  that 
the  result  would  be  very  good  provided  the  Republican 
Party  would  put  into  effect  a  system  of  national  educa 
tion.  In  this  letter  Tourgee  also  says  that  even  as 
early  as  1870  he  had  begun  to  try  to  get  the  Republican 
Party  interested  in  national  education,  and  had  per 
sisted  in  this  attempt  up  to  the  present  time.  In  the 
following  June,  Garfield  summoned  Tourgee  to  Wash 
ington  for  a  conference  on  the  matter  of  educational 
1  "The  Bystander  is  perhaps  the  only  private  citizen  to  whom 
a  Republican  President  ever  wrote,  'But  for  the  publication  of 
your  work  I  do  not  think  my  election  would  have  been  possible/  " 
"A  Bystander's  Notes,"  The  Chicago  Inter  Ocean,  January  29, 
1892. 


78-  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

methods.  After  a  two  hours'  conversation  about  this 
matter,  Garfield  said:  "You  are  right.  There  is  no 
other  way.  We  must  begin — at  the  beginning.  Write 
out  your  views  of  what  is  possible  to  be  done  and  let 
me  have  them — or,  better  still,  put  them  into  a  book 
and  I  will  study  it.  Of  course  I  must  find  my  own 
way  in  this  matter,  but  you  can  help  me.  No  one  else 
has  studied  the  subject  in  the  same  way  or  from  the 
same  standpoint  that  you  have  occupied.  .  .  .  You 
must  help  me  in  this  matter."  1  Tourgee  promised  to" 
write  the  book  and  did  so  in  "An  Appeal  to  Caesar"; 
but  several  years  before  it  appeared,  Garfield  was  only 
a  memory. 

Lectures,  the  dramatization  of  "A  Fool's  Errand," 
and  a  controversy  over  that  book,  occupied  the  winter 
of  1880-1.  Tourgee  spent  most  of  this  period  in 
Philadelphia  at  the  home  of  his  life-long  friends,  both 
of  whom  he  had  known  as  a  boy,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Joseph 
Warner.  To  the  list  of  lectures  given  in  his  Southern 
readings,  at  least  two  more  titles  were  now  added: 
"Give  Us  a  Rest"  and  "How  to  Boss  the  Bosses."  He 
usually  started  to  read  his  lectures;  but  as  he  warmed 
to  his  subject,  the  printed  pages  were  often  thrown 
aside  and  the  topic  was  finished  extempore. 

It  was,  however,  the  dramatization  of  "A  Fool's 
Errand,"  in  collaboration  with  Steele  Mackaye,  that 
took  most  of  Tourgee's  time  during  this  winter  and 
the  coming  summer  as  well.  The  slight  success  that 
an  unauthorized  dramatization  had  made  in  the  West, 
had  caused  him  to  give  notice  that  prosecution  would 
x"An  Appeal  to  Caesar,"  p.  17. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  79 

follow  any  more  like  attempts,  and  had  also  very 
probably  given  him  the  idea  of  making  an  authorized 
version.  The  business  contract,  drawn  up  between 
Tourgee  and  Mackaye  on  June  n,  1881,  states  that 
the  plot  of  the  play  was  made  in  unison;  Tourgee 
wrote  the  first  dramatic  version,  and  Mackaye  then 
made  such  changes  in  construction  as  his  experience 
as  a  dramatist  warranted.  In  matters  of  structure, 
Mackaye's  judgment  was  final;  in  matters  of  fact  re 
garding  the  South  and  related  subjects,  Tourgee' s 
opinion  was  likewise  unquestioned.  Proceeds  result 
ing  from  royalties  were  to  be  equally  divided.  The 
proceeds  were,  however,  unfortunately  very  slim,  for 
on  its  first  appearance  in  Philadelphia  in  the  end  of 
October,  1881,  the  play  was  hissed  and  lasted  less 
than  two  weeks.  The  story  of  the  dramatic  version 
was  practically  the  same  as  that  of  the  book,  except* 
that  Servosse  was  still  ^alive  at  the  end  of  the  play.  It 
contained  four  acts  of  one  scene  each,  except  the  third 
act  which  had  three  scenes,  and  each  act  closed  with  a 
"curtain  thriller."  Scenes  of  Ku  Klux  outrages  usurped 
the  greater  part  of  the  plot,  with  a  corresponding  lack 
of  humor  and  emotional  relief.  The  play's  failure 
was  thus  about  as  complete  as  any  orthodox  South 
erner  could  have  wished. 

Near  the  first  of  January,  1881,  there  appeared  "A 
Reply  to  A  Fool's  Errand  by  One  of  the  Fools,"  * 
written  by  Wm.  L.  Royal,  a  Southerner  by  birth,  who 
had  fought  for  the  Confederacy  and  then  studied  law 
in  Richmond  before  joining  the  New  York  Bar.  The 
*J.  E.  Hale  &  Son,  1881,  New  York. 


80  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

general  tone  of  this  work  is  sufficiently  indicated  by  the3 
following  passage,  taken  from  the  preface:  "I  look 
upon  the  book  to  which  I  have  attempted  to  reply  as  a 
willful,  deliberate,  and  malicious  libel  upon  a  noble 
and  generous  people.  ...  I  look  upon  its  author  as 
one  of  the  most  contemptible  fellows  of  those  who  have 
libeled  that  people,  and  not  at  all  less  contemptible 
because  highly  endowed  with  intellect/'  After  paying 
his  respects  to  the  cleverness  and  popularity  of  the 
book,  Royal  bitterly  castigates  Tourgee  for  his  repre 
sentation  of  the  negro  dialect,  his  claim  that  nearly  all 
Southern  people  hated  the  North  as  much  as  they 
hated  the  negro,  and  charges  him  with  being  partner  in 
an  affair  involving  financial  dishonesty.  The  author 
of  this  piece  of  mordant  vituperation  excelled  Tour- 
gee  himself  in  the  ability  to  make  unqualified  state 
ments  of  whimsical  beliefs.  Tourgee  replied  to  this 
book  in  the  New  York  Tribune,  January  31,  1881,  in 
a  four-column  letter,  in  which  he  endeavored  to  refute 
one  of  Royal's  claims,  to  the  effect  that  the  chaotic  state 
of  the  South  was  due  largely  to  the  presence  of  nu 
merous  carpet-baggers.  Royal  then  had  a  new  edition 
of  his  -book  printed,  containing  a  "Reply"  to  Tourgee's 
"Reply,"  in  which  a  not  very  convincing  attempt  was 
made  to  show  that  Tourgee  had  juggled  figures  in  giv 
ing  statistics,  and  in  which  also  the  ancient  argument 
was  advanced  that  the  teachings  of  revealed  religion 
show  that  the  negro  is  inferior  to  the  white.  The 
"Reply"  closes  with  this  Parthian  shot:  "Upon  the 
whole,  I  desire  to  say  that  when  Mr.  Tourgee  under 
takes  to  write  history,  he  establishes  his  right  to  the 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  81 

place  that  his  ardent  admirers  claim  for  him — to  wit, 
that  of  the  greatest  author  of  fiction  of  the  day."  The 
Tribune  for  March  15,  1881,  characterizes  Royal's 
book  by  saying  that  the  author  "is  satisfied  with  pro 
nouncing  the  statements  of  Judge  Tourgee  'as  false  as 
hell' — a  mode  of  reasoning  which  can  hardly  be  called 
conclusive."  The  book  is  then  of  little  value,  because 
the  writer's  prejudices  were  much  greater  than  those  of 
Tourgee ;  it  is  cited  here  merely  because  it  is  the  chief 
specimen l  of  a  number  of  attacks  made  upon  the 
tenets  which  "A  Fool's  Errand"  had  so  doughtily  ad 
vanced. 

Public  approbation  of  Tourgee's  literary  work  was 
shown  in  March  of  this  year  by  a  friendly  dinner 
given  him  in  New  York  by  the  Union  League  Club. 
The  speakers  who  toasted  him  included,  among  others, 
John  Jay  and  Joseph  H.  Choate.  In  response  to  their 
toasts,  Tourgee  told  of  an  interview  which  he  had  had 
with  President  Grant,  in  which  he  [Tourgee]  had  sug 
gested  education  as  the  best  remedy  for  Southern  con 
ditions;  but,  having  failed  in  his  direct  attempts  to  in 
fluence  legislation,  he  had  turned  to  the  novel  as  the 
best  means  of  effecting  his  idea  of  reform.  • 

In  the  spring  of  1881,  while  on  a  lecture  trip  in 
western  New  York,  Tourgee  saw  in  a  Buffalo  paper 
an  advertisement  offering  for  sale  a  large  house  and 

Another  specimen  is  "Not  a  Fool's  Errand,"  by  Rev.  J.  H. 
Ingraham,  G.  W.  Carleton  &  Co.,  New  York,  1880,  a  collection  of 
letters  describing  the  peripatetic  adventures  of  a  Northern  gov 
erness  in  the  South.  She  becomes  converted  to  the  South 
erners'  point  of  view;  therefore  her  sojourn  in  that  region  is 
"not  a  fool's  errand." 


82  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

some  thirty-five  acres  of  land  at  Mayville,  New  York, 
a  village  containing  hardly  one  thousand  people,  the 
county  seat  of  Chautauqua  County,  and  situated  on  the 
northern  end  of  Chautauqua  Lake,  only  three  miles 
from  the  parent  Chautauqua  Institution.  He  at  once 
journeyed  to  the  place,  and  liked  it  so  well  that  before 
long  Mrs.  Tourgee  was  taken  there  for  her  opinion  of 
it  as  a  future  permanent  home.  She  was  charmed  with 
the  spot,  and  the  place  was  soon  purchased  with  a  part 
of  the  $60,000  which  Tourgee  had  in  the  bank  at  that 
time,  the  proceeds  of  the  three  novels  published  during 
the  last  two  years.  The  house,  a  fine,  large  mansion 
built  and  formerly  owned  by  one  member  of  the 
"Tweed  Ring,"  needed  some  remodeling;  but  by  June 
1, 1881,  the  Mayville  Sentinel  could  print  this  notice  in 
the  local  news  item:  "Judge  A.  W.  Tourgee  and 
family  are  now  located  among  the  residents  of  May 
ville,  they  having  arrived  yesterday."  Tourgee  made 
his  wife  a  present  of  the  place,  and  she  at  once  aptly 
dubbed  it  "Thorheim." 

Several  reasons  had  influenced  the  Tourgees  in  tak 
ing  up  their  residence  in  this  new  locality.  They  both 
loved  country  life,  and  Tourgee  was  inordinately  fond 
of  fishing,  for  which  the  lake,  less  than  half  a  mile 
from  his  home,  offered  abundant  opportunity.  The 
fact  that  the  locality  was  strongly  Republican  also  ap 
pealed  to  him,  for  the  taste  which  he  had  already  had 
of  public  life  had  given  him  a  hankering  after  more 
of  it ;  a  desire  which  was  destined  never  to  be  very  well 
satisfied.  For  the  next  sixteen  years  this  place  was  his 
permanent  home;  and  it  is  of  course  obvious  that  dur- 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  83 

ing  this  time  "Judge  Torjay,"  as  his  neighbors  called 
him,  was  the  leading  citizen  of  the  sleepy  little  hamlet, 
and  the  recipient  of  many  local  honors.  For  most 
of  the  time  during  the  next  three  years,  however,  the 
Tourgees  were  in  Philadelphia  engaged  in  a  journalis 
tic  venture  of  no  little  magnitude. 


CHAPTER  IV 
"OUR  CONTINENT" 

THE  first  number  of  Our  Continent,  which  was  pub 
lished  at  Chestnut  and  Eleventh  Streets,  Philadelphia, 
appeared  February  15,  1882.  This  newcomer  in  jour 
nalistic  fields  was  started  by  what  was  virtually  a 
partnership  between  Tourgee  and  Robert  S.  Davis; 
Tourgee  was  general  editor  and  Davis  furnished  the 
major  part  of  the  necessary  funds.  This  magazine 
was,  according  to  Tourgee,  "the  first  serious  attempt 
ever  made  to  put  into  a  weekly  the  attractions  and  ex 
cellences  of  our  great  monthlies."  *  It  proclaimed  its 
general  purpose  thus :  "This  journal  is  not,  however, 
intended  to  be  the  vehicle  of  any  peculiar  ideas.  It 
may  very  probably  call  a  spade  a  spade,  and  may  even 
shy  a  brick  at  an  especially  obtrusive  head  now  and 
then,  but  as  a  rule  its  politics  will  be  non-partisan  as 
its  religion  will  be  non-sectarian."  2  That  it  was  pre 
vailingly  Republican  in  its  politics,  however,  need 
hardly  be  mentioned.  It  was  indeed  as  large  as  the 
average  monthly  periodical,  and  contained  the  usual 
popular  features  characteristic  of  such  productions: 

1  Vol.  II,  p.  477. 
1  Vol.  I,  p.  72. 

84 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  85 

short  stories,  serial  stories,  "Notes  and  Queries,"  "Lit 
erary  Notes,"  "The  Household,"  "Science,"  "Jot 
tings,"  "Notes  on  Dress,"  "In  Lighter  Vein,"  "Home 
Horticulture,"  articles  of  general  interest,  and  so  forth. 
Thus  it  attempted  to  "lay  before  our  readers  from 
week  to  week  the  best  thought  of  our  best  writers,  il 
lustrated  by  the  best  work  of  our  best  artists,  and 
clothed  in  the  most  befitting  garb  that  the  highest  me 
chanical  skill  can  devise."  x  The  art  department  was 
managed  by  Donald  G.  Mitchell;  and  other  writers  of 
prominence,  including  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  made 
contributions.  The  magazine  sold  for  ten  cents  a  copy 
and  four  dollars  a  year. 

A  large  part  of  its  material  was  of  course  contributed 
by  Tourgee.  Again  and  again  in  its  pages  he  assever 
ated  that  he  willingly  took  all  responsibility  for  what 
ever  appeared  in  it,  and  as  usual  preened  himself  on  the 
fact  that  he  was  outspoken,  fearless  and  independent. 
Much  of  his  literary  work  consisted  in  the  grinding  of 
old  axes:  discussions  of  the  South,  innumerable  de 
fenses  of  the  negro,  and  the  advocacy  of  Republican 
principles,  as  well  as  attacks  upon  the  Republican  party 
for  its  failure  to  effect  legislation  leading  to  national 
education.  In  1884  he  strongly  advocated  the  nomina 
tion  of  Robert  Lincoln  as  Republican  candidate  for 
president,  but  finally  acquiesced  with  a  show  of  good 
grace  in  the  nomination  of  Blaine.  In  addition,  he 
wrote  many  articles  of  a  purely  popular  nature,  such 
as,  the  value  of  home  life,  proper  training  for  rich 
men's  sons,  the  necessity  for  all  to  take  part  in  politics, 

xVol.  I,  p.  8. 


86  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

warnings  against  the  excessive  use  of  tobacco  and  alco 
hol,  attacks  on  the  Mormons,  criticisms  of  various  au 
thors,  the  part  of  the  church  in  social  service — and  so 
on,  in  an  endless  variety  that  still  had  unity  in  the  fact 
that  these  effusions  were  all  largely  cant,  after  the 
manner  of  most  popular  magazines. 

One  work  of  real  importance  by  Tourgee  first  ap 
peared  in  the  pages  of  Our  Continent.  This  was  "Hot 
Plowshares,"  last  in  the  series  of  six  Reconstruction 
novels,  though  first  in  chronological  order,  for  the 
story  closes  when  the  Civil  War  had  just  begun.  This 
novel  was  started  in  July,  1882,  and  ran,  with  occa 
sional  lapses,  until  May,  1883,  in  the  spring  of  which 
year  it  also  appeared  in  book  form,  published,  as  all 
the  others  had  been,  by  Fords,  Howard  and  Hulbert. 
It  was  composed  amid  hard  conditions.  "This  story 
from  the  first  has  been  written  under  the  most  difficult 
and  peculiar  circumstances.  It  had  just  been  com 
menced  when  it  became  necessary  for  the  writer  to  as 
sume  the  entire  control  and  management  of  the  Con 
tinent,  both  editorially  and  as  a.  publisher."  *  Nervous 
ness  caused  by  summer  heat  acting  upon  his  old  wound 
and  a  temporary  spell  of  eye-trouble  had  also  hindered 
the  composition  of  the  tale.  As  the  preface  to  the  pub 
lished  volume  states,  it  was  "designed  to  give  a  review 
of  the  Anti-Slavery  struggle  by  tracing  its  growth  and 
the  influences  of  the  sentiment  upon  contrasted  char 
acters."  Thus  it  discusses,  with  the  usual  combination 
of  fictitious  and  historical  elements,  the  growth  of  the 
Abolition  movement  in  the  North,  and  the  Fugitive 

1  Vol.  II,  p.  571. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  87 

Slave  Law,  with  its  attendant,  the  "Underground 
Railroad."  The  main  events  take  place  in  a  small  vil 
lage  in  central  New  York. 

The  story  gets  its  title  from  the  fact  that  the  heroine, 
Hilda  Hargrove,  is  supposed  to  have  a  taint  of  African 
blood  in  her  veins,  and  is  therefore  obliged  to  undergo 
the  ordeal  of  public  contempt;  but,  as  might  be  ex 
pected,  she  is  eventually  proved  to  be  of  pure  Caucas 
ian  blood,  through  the  efficacy  of  concealed  documents 
luckily  found,  by  a  crazed  woman,  in  a  secret  drawer. 
Because  of  this  lucky  find,  the  "hot  plowshares" 
Hilda  "had  been  called  upon  to  tread"  prove  harmless 
and  she  triumphantly  marries  the  hero.  He  is  Martin 
Kortright,  son  of  the  farmer,  Harrison  Kortright;  the 
parent  eventually  becomes  wealthy  through  the  con 
struction  and  successful  operation  of  factories—doubt 
less  another  literary  echo  of  Tourgee's  experiment 
with  the  handle  factory.  Harrison  Kortright  is  the 
best  picture  of  Valentine  Tourgee  ever  drawn  by  his 
son,  and  the  conversation  in  the  opening  chapter  be 
tween  the  Kortright  father  and  son  had  actually  taken 
place  between  Valentine  Tourgee  and  his  strong- 
willed  boy.  In  other  respects  the  hero  resembles  Tour- 
gee  only  in  that  he  is  a  lawyer  and  officer  in  the  Union 
cause.  The  mystery  of  Hilda's  birth  furnishes  the 
chief  interest  in  the  narrative,  which  is  also  enlivened 
by  stirring  pictures  of  a  runaway  sleigh,  the  destruc 
tion  of  the  mills  by  fire,  and  the  attempted  abduction 
of  Hilda.  The  artificialities  of  plot  which  have  been 
noted  in  preceding  tales  appear  here  in  wonted  abun 
dance.  Repetition  of  the  elements  common  to  most  of 


88  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

the  five  earlier  novels— contrasts  between  the  civiliza 
tion  of  the  North  and  the  South,  categorical  lists  of 
the  motives  which  bring  about  certain  episodes  of  the 
action,  as  well  as  eulogies  of  Lincoln  and  John  Brown 
— abound  in  the  story,  which  is  perhaps  the  weakest  in 
the  series  of  Reconstruction  novels,  with  the  exception 
of  "John  Eax."  The  fact  that  it  was  written  primarily 
for  serial  publication  intensified  the  tendency,  already 
strong  in  Tourgee,  of  closing  many  chapters  with  the 
thrill  that  the  "to-be-continued-in-our-next"  story  usu 
ally  strives  to  arouse  for  financial  reasons. 

Mrs.  Tourgee's  diary,  May  17,  1882,  reads  as  fol 
lows  :  "At  Albion's  request,  I  write  that  his  prediction 
is  that  one  year  from  today  he  will  have  $100,000  in 
the  bank,  outside  of  his  property  and  Thorheim,  and 
if  this  prediction  is  fulfilled,  he  will  go  to  Europe  and 
stay  a  year."  But  the  prophecy  was  not  fulfilled,  for 
in  spite  of  repeated  assertions  that  Our  Contimnt  was 
a  success,  it  soon  became  evident  that  trouble  was  in 
the  air.  Davis  had  become  frightened  at  the  possi 
bility  of  failure,  and  transferred  all  his  interests  in 
the  publication  to  Tourgee  for  $10,000  long  before 
even  one  volume  was  completed.  / 

Mrs.  Tourgee  worked  in  the  office  every  day  far 
more  regularly  than  Tourgee  himself,  but  even  her 
great  industry  could  by  no  means  counterbalance  the 
lack  of  business  instincts  in  her  strongly  opinionated 
husband.  By  January  15,  1883,  she  was  constrained 
to  record  in  her  diary  this  blunt  fact :  "Blue  day  in  the 
office  for  the  Judge,"  and  this  expression  was  often  re 
peated  in  the  months  that  followed.  In  July  of  this 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  89 

year  Tourgee  wrote  to  James  Gordon  Bennett,  request 
ing  him  to  help  back  up  Our  Continent  with  his  capital, 
but  no  aid  came  from  that  source. 

In  the  following  October  a  removal  was  made  to 
23  Park  Row,  New  York,  though  the  Philadelphia  of 
fice  was  retained.  The  change  was  deemed  expedient 
because  of  the  greater  business  opportunities  of  New 
York,  and  also  because  the  chief  persons  who  had  of 
fered  financial  assistance  in  Philadelphia  had  been  a 
liquor  dealer,  an  infidel*  and  two  Democrats;  it  would 
have  been  gall  and  wormwood  for  Tourgee  to  accept 
aid  from  any  of  this  quartet.  Aid  from  the  liquor 
dealer  was  quite  certainly  refused,  for  Tourgee  would 
not  take  liquor  advertisements  in  Our  Continent  at  any 
price.  The  new  situation  did  not,  however,  help  mat 
ters  much.  Things  still  went  from  bad  to  worse,  and 
by  July,  1884,  Tourgee' s  sworn  statement  reveals  that 
the  average  monthly  receipts  from  subscriptions  were 
only  $1425.  At  the  beginning  of  this  year,  he  used  the 
device,  so  often  employed  by  struggling  periodicals,  of 
offering  prizes  for  the  best  short  stories  as  a  means  of 
arousing  the  flagging  public  interest,  as  well  as  prizes 
for  those  who  secured  the  greatest  number  of  subscrip 
tions  for  the  magazine;  and  these  prizes  in  many  cases 
were  his  own  novels.  But  all  efforts  to  keep  the  publi 
cation  going  were  vain,  and  on  August  20,  1884,  it 
made  its  final  appearance.  This  last  number,  how 
ever,  contained  no  mention  of  the  fact  that  it  was  the 
magazine's  swan  song.  - 

The  details  of  its  demise  are  not  very  clear,  for 
Mrs.  Tourgee  stopped  keeping  her  diary  through  this 


90  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

troublesome  period,  or  else  destroyed  it,  and  few  au 
thentic  records  have  been  found.  But  there  are  several 
references  in  the  diary  for  1885  which  show  that  the 
latter  part  of  1884  was  largely  taken  up  in  nerve-rack 
ing  legal  matters  connected  with  the  financial  affairs  of 
the  publication.  It  had  had  a  capital  of  $150,000  com 
posed  of  shares  of  fifty  dollars  each,  and  no  less  a 
person  than  Ulysses  S.  Grant  had  $1000  worth  of  these 
shares.  This  is  shown  by  his  letter  of  July  30,  1884, 
in  which  he  asked  Tourgee  to  return  the  principal  and 
accumulated  interest,  since,  because  of  recent  misfor 
tunes,  one  thousand  dollars  now  meant  much  to  him. 
Tourgee  replied,  stating  the  facts  about  the  financial 
condition  of  the  magazine;  and  on  October  16,  Grant 
answered,  saying  that  he  was  unaware  of  these  facts, 
begged  pardon  for  asking  the  return  of  the  money,  and 
requested  Tourgee  not  to  give  himself  another  thought 
about  the  matter.  Tourgee  has  briefly  summed  up  his 
experiences  with  Our  Continent  in  this  excerpt  from 
one  of  his  letters:  "A  very  rich  man  induced  me  in 
1 88 1  to  engage  with  him  in  publishing  the  Continent 
magazine.  When  his  extravagance  and  pretense  had 
swamped  what  ought  to  have  been  a  success,  he  dug 
out  and  I  very  foolishly  undertook  to  resuscitate  the 
corpse.  Had  I  been  brave  enough  to  cut  expenses 
down  to  bed-rock,  I  should  have  succeeded.  But  I 
was  not.  ...  It  was  a  bad  break — took  everything  and 
a  lot  more."  This  was  literally  true,  for  the  $60,000  re 
ceived  from  his  books  was  gone,  Thorheim  and  even 
the  future  sale  of  the  books  themselves  had  been 
mortgaged,  and  debts  still  remained.  Tourgee  went  to 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  91 

stay  with  a  cousin  of  his  in  Grimsby,  Canada,  for  some 
time  in  the  autumn  of  1884,  trying  to  collect  his  ener 
gies  to  face  the  consequences  of  this  most  disastrous 
of  all  the  blows  that  had  thus  far  struck  him.  Mean 
while  his  wife  remained  in  New  York,  settling  the 
business  affairs  of  the  publication,  and  at  the  close  of 
the  year  they  both  returned  to  Thorheim.  This  ex 
perience  unquestionably  made  Tourgee  a  sadder,  as 
well  as  poorer,  man ;  but  it  unfortunately  did  not  make 
him  an  appreciably  wiser  one. 


CHAPTER  V 

THORHEIM 

THE  next  twelve  years  of  Tourgee's  life  (1885- 
1897)  were  spent  wholly  at  Thorheim,  save  for  scores 
of  trips  made  all  over  the  United  States,  but  particu 
larly  in  the  eastern  part,  to  fill  lecture  engagements. 
On  the  whole  it  was  a  very  disheartening  time,  marked 
by  steadily  waning  literary  powers,  with  an^  accom 
panying  diminution  of  sales  for  the  products  of  his 
pen,  and  hence  a  regular  lessening  of  income.  During 
the  last  half  of  this  period,  Tourgee  was  little  more 
than  a  hack  writer,  using  whatever  skill  he  had  on  any 
sort  of  writing  that  offered  hopes  of  publication;  and 
only  too  often  did  his  manuscripts  go  on  more  than 
one  journey  only  to  return  accompanied  by  the  usual 
rejection  notice,  while  many  of  them  never  appeared 
in  print  at  all.  Many  articles  which,  after  several  trips 
to  and  fro,  finally  obtained  publication,  might  better 
never  have  been  printed  so  far  as  his  reputation  is 
concerned. 

The  best  record  of  his  activities  during  this  time  is 
contained  in  his  wife's  diary.  The  perusal  of  this  fairly 
systematic  record  of  his  life  from  1881  till  his  death 
makes  it  plainly  evident  that  she  was  the  nobler  soul. 

92 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  93 

Hardly  once  did  she  fail  through  these  years  of  trial 
and  continual  disappointment  to  be  his  constant  in 
spiration  ;  while,  in  a  more  practical  sense,  it  was  largely 
due  to  her  untiring  energy,  despite  frequent  attacks  of 
illness  which  often  overcame  her,  that  Tourgee's  liter 
ary  and  business  ventures  attained  what  small  success 
they  did.  Without  her  assistance  in  the  office  as  aman 
uensis,  proof-reader  and  general  business  manager, 
their  financial  condition  would  have  been  much  worse, 
and  the  retention  of  Thorheim,  the  maintenance  of 
which  cost  no  little  sum  on  account  of  its  large  size, 
would  have  been  impossible.  Besides  this  constant  fear 
of  financial  ruin,  she  had  to  bear  with  the  many  ir 
ritable  traits  of  her  husband.  His  headstrong  nature, 
his  cocksure  confidence  in  his  own  opinions,  his  exces 
sive  love  of  fishing  with  the  accompanying  waste  of 
many  valuable  days,  his  constant  desire  to  enter  the  po 
litical  arena — all  these  well-defined  traits  of  his  taxed 
her  wifely  powers  of  diplomacy  to  the  uttermost.  "Blue 
and  discouraged"  recurs  again  and  again  in  the  diary. 
The  following  passages,  selected  from  many  of  a  like 
nature,  illustrate  the  constant  strain  she  was  forced  to 
undergo : 

July  1 6,  1885.     "Albion  went  fishing,  but  as  usual 
caught  nothing;  but,  as  it  does  him  just  as  much  good, 


no  one  cares." 


October  2,  1885.  "Was  glad  Albion  did  not  get  the 
nomination."  [This  refers  to  his  attempt,  which  had 
seemed  possible  of  success,  to  be  nominated  for  State 
Senator.] 

September  30,  1886.     "A  serious,  fruitless  talk  with 


94  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

Albion.  It  is  useless  to  hope  to  influence  him.  His 
own  way  is  always  the  right  way." 

October  8,  1886.  "Albion  went  this  morning  fish 
ing  all  day  and  dwindled  away  all  the  golden  day, 
when  honor,  which  means  everything,  is  at  stake."  . 

May  14,  1887.  "Anniversary  of  our  marriage. 
Still  in  bed  and  spent  a  very  unhappy  day.  How  the 
sweet  dreams  vanish  as  the  years  go  by!" 

June  2,  1887.  "A  rainy,  gloomy  day  with  many  sad 
accompaniments.  Albion  in  despair  over  his  work. 
Life  does  not  seem  worth  the  struggle  anyhow." 

In  spite  of  the  despondency  evident  in  such  passages, 
it  is  nevertheless  true  that  on  the  whole  the  Tourgees* 
family  life,  apart  from  financial  worries,  was  a  happy 
one.  "So  glad  Albion  is  back,"  appears  frequently  in 
the  diary,  upon  occasions  when  Tourgee  returned  from 
lecture  engagements.  The  testimony  of  their  close 
friends,  as  well  as  that  of  the  diary,  indicates  that 
there  was  more  domestic  felicity  at  Thorheim  than  in 
the  majority  of  households.  Almost  always  during 
these  years  several  friends  or  relatives  shared  the  hos 
pitality  of  Thorheim,  and  birthdays,  marriage  anni 
versaries,  and  other  like  times  were  made  memorable 
by  festive  activities.  When  the  cares  of  the  office  were 
off  his  mind,  Tourgee  was  always  excellent  company, 
whether  at  the  fireside  or  in  the  fishing-boat. 

Tourgee's  next  volume,  after  the  publication  of  the 
Reconstruction  novels,  was  "An  Appeal  to  Caesar,"  a 
series  of  campaign  documents  written  to  influence  the 
Republican  party,  symbolized  as  "Caesar,"  to  put  into 
effective  legislation  his  pet  project — national  educa- 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  95 

tion.  As  noted  previously,  it  was  written  in  fulfillment 
of  a  promise  made  to  President  Garfield,  and  certain 
parts  of  it  had  already  appeared  in  Our  Continent. 
It  was  published  in  the  autumn  of  1884,  having  been 
dictated  from  a  bed  of  pain  that  year.  This  series  of 
essays,  written  in  much  the  same  manner  as  a  lawyer's 
argument,  deals  with  Tourgee's  "FOOL'S  ERRAND,"  to 
the  South  and  his  consequent  disenchantment.  He  at 
tempts  to  show,  by  a  long  array  of  arguments  and  nu 
merous  tables  of  statistics,  that  the  negro  population  in 
the  South  will  steadily  increase,  while  the  whites  will 
decrease ;  he  discusses  other  plans  that  have  been  pro 
posed  as  a  remedy  for  the  present  intolerable  state  of 
affairs  in  the  South  and  shows  their  inadequacy;  and 
he  then  advocates  his  own  specific  nostrum  that  will, 
according  to  him,  prove  an  infallible  remedy  for  the 
present  ill,  a  remedy  already  broadly  outlined  in  "A 
Fool's  Errand"  and  in  a  more  detailed  manner  in 
"Bricks  without  Straw,"  but  never  before  treated  at 
such  expository  and  argumentative  length.  This  remedy 
is  national  education,  the  funds  devoted  to  this  purpose 
to  be  subject  not  at  all  to  State  control,  but  "to  be  dis 
tributed,  on  the  basis  of  illiteracy,  to  the  various  town 
ships  and  school-districts  in  which  free  primary  scJwols 
shall  have  been  in  active  operation  for  a  specified 
period  during  the  time  covered  by  the  appropriation, 
and  liaving  a  specified  average  attendance"  (p.  319). 
He  then  proceeds  verbally  to  pummel  objections  that 
may  be  raised  to  his  plan.  As  an  inducement  to  the 
acceptance  of  his  scheme,  he  holds  out  the  threat  of  a 
possible  future  uprising  of  the  blacks  against  the  South 


96  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

unless  his  method  of  dealing  with  the  Reconstruction 
problem  is  employed. 

Tourgee  did  not  argue  for  his  theory  in  a  manner 
calculated  to  conciliate  the  South.  "The  writer  knows 
full  well  that  very  few  of  the  white  men  of  the  South 
believe  that  this  time  [when  the  negro  receives  his 
rights]  can  ever  .come.  They  think  the  black  man's 
capacity  for  endurance  has  been  divinely  adapted  to 
the  infinity  of  their  arrogance"  (p.  404).  The  book 
closes  with  a  final  chapter  urging  those  who  read  it  to 
bombard  their  representatives  in  Congress  with  letters 
demanding  that  action  be  taken  to  put  this  educational 
policy  into  practice.  Tourgee  had  already  circulated 
a  petition  to  this  effect,  which  had  been  signed  by  some 
thousands  of  voters  (p.  319). 

Northern  press  comments  on  the  book  were  as  usual 
over-laudatory,  for  few  of  them  mentioned  the  plainly 
evident  conviction  of  infallible  prophetic'powers,  and 
the  usual  animus  against  all  things  Southern  except 
the  negro.  The  New  York  Nation  spoke  of  it  thus: 
"We  wish  to  do  a  piece  of  justice  and  frankly  confess 
that  we  had  a  strong  prejudice  against  Judge  Tourgee 
as  an  embittered  sufferer  from  dispelled  illusions.  .  .  . 
We  read  on  with  a  determined  intellectual  resistance  to 
the  foreshadowed  proposal  of  national  interference  in 
State  affairs.  But  when  we  came  to  his  plan  of  na 
tional  education,  we  could  not  deny  its  reasonable  and 
statesmanlike  character/' 

This  book  had  been  written  in  every  faith  that  the 
Republican  party  would  triumph  at  the  polls  in  Novem 
ber,  1884.  But  the  election  of  Cleveland  put  a  very 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  97 

different  aspect  on  national  affairs.  As  a  result  of  this 
catastrophe,  for  such  it  was  in  his  opinion,  Tourgee 
began,  in  The  Chicago  Inter-Ocean,  a  series  of  weekly 
articles  which  ran  from  December  10,  1884,  till  two 
weeks  past  the  time  of  Cleveland's  inaugural  in  the 
following  March.  They  were  addressed  to  "A  Man  of 
Destiny,"  signed  "Siva,"  and  marked  the  beginning  of 
a  relationship  with  the  Inter-Ocean  that  was  almost 
unbroken  for  the  next  thirteen  years.  These  weekly 
articles  caused  so  much  comment  that  in  March,  1885, 
William  Penn  Nixon,  editor  of  the  Inter-Ocean,  had 
them  published  in  book  form.  The  essays  are  political 
satires  addressed  personally  to  Cleveland,  much  like 
the  previous  "C"  letters  in  tone,  though  this  later  work 
surpasses  the  earlier  in  partisan  fury,  rancorous  in 
vective,  and  nasty  personalities.  The  following  pas 
sages  are  the  best  commentary  on  the  tone  of  the  es 
says  :  "Knowing,  as  you  do,  how  little  worthy  of  note 
your  life  has  been,  and  how  utterly  barren  your  mind 
and  character  are  of  all  those  elements  usually  ac 
counted  needful  to  a  fit  exemplification  of  our  Ameri 
can  life,  it  must  be  with  some  sense  of  dizziness  that 
you  find  yourself  about  to  be  hoisted  upon  the  pinnacle 
of  national  power  as  the  representative  headlight  of 
American  Statesmanship"  (p.  n).  "If  you  are  a 
true  type  of  American  life,  it  is  high  time  that  we  had 
a  new  ideal"  (p  108).  "I  pity  you  as  I  do  the  snarl 
ing  scavenger  of  the  desert  sands,  because  he  is  not 
fitted  for  better  things.  I  pity  you  standing  before 
the  world  as  the  exemplar  of  the  American  people,  as 
I  would  pity  a  Lilliputian  leper  put  forward  as  a  rep- 


98  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

resentative  and  type  of  the  unlettered  giants  of  Brob- 
dingnag.  I  pity  you  as  an  inert  instrument  of  an  unholy 
combination  of  evil  purposes — the  victim  of  a  party's 
greed  for  power  and  of  a  faction's  blood-stained 
strength.  I  pity  you"  (p.  109)— but  here  a  stop  had 
best  be  made  and  "pity,"  if  not  indeed  a  harsher  feel 
ing,  be  bestowed  upon  a  man  who  would  stoop  to  such 
indignities,  upon  a  newspaper,  partisan  though  it  was, 
that  would  print  them,  and  upon  a  portion  of  the  public 
that  would  read  and  believe  them.  There  is  of  course 
some  palliation  for  Tourgee  in  that  he  was  merely  fol 
lowing  in  the  steps  of  an  innumerable  host  of  political 
muck-rakers.  It  is  perhaps  better  neither  to  justify  nor 
condemn  these  ineptitudes  too  strongly,  as  well  as  not 
to  take  them  too  seriously;  for  the  absolutely  uncon 
scious  naivete  of  the  whole  series  of  papers,  in  their 
assumption  of  unfailing  wisdom,  prophecy,  and  the 
right  to  act  as  dictatory  counselor,  results  in  giving 
the  reader  a  refreshingly  large  amount  of  amusement. 
The  question  of  the  authorship  of  the  papers,  as  in 
previous  anonymous  publications  of  Tourgee,  was 
again  widely  discussed  and  many  suggestions  were 
made,  including,  among  others,  the  names  of  Roscoe 
Conkling,  James  G.  Blaine,  and,  impossible  though  it 
may  seem,  Ulysses  S.  Grant.  By  the  first  of  August 
the  sale  of  the  book  had  netted  Tourgee  over  four 
hundred  dollars;  but  after  that  there  was  little  de 
mand  for  it,  possibly  because  Cleveland's  record  of 
sturdy,  uncompromising  efficiency  had  at  least  partial 
ly  shown  how  completely  fatuous  the  chief  ideas  in 
the  book  had  proved  to  be. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  99 

Still  determined  to  nag  Cleveland  as  much  as  he 
could,  immediately  after  the  "Man  of  Destiny"  series 
had  been  completed,  Tourgee  began  to  bombard  the 
Democratic  administration  in  a  new  set  of  papers. 
These  received  the  title  "The  Veteran  and  His  Pipe," 
and  ran  in  the  Inter-Ocean  from  April  to  September, 
1885.  They  consist  of  dialogues  between  several  Civil 
War  veterans,  who  continually  praise  the  patriotism 
of  the  country  as  they  knew  it  in  their  youth,  and  as 
unceasingly  lament  the  crass  indifference  to  country 
and  to  the  heroes  of  the  war  which  they  see  at  the 
present  time.  Modern  apathy  to  sentiment  of  all  kinds 
versus  old-time  reverence  of  it,  eulogies  of  Lincoln 
and  Grant,  vitriolic  onslaughts  against  the  Reconstruc 
tion  policy,  as  well  as  against  Cleveland's  appointments 
and  upon  him  personally  because  he  had  not  fought  for 
the  Northern  cause,  much  discussion  of  Southern  mat 
ters  already  broached  in  Tourgee's  novels,  and  de 
fenses  of  himself  from  the  charge  that  he  was  unduly 
prejudiced  against  the  South — these  are  the  main  topics 
in  this  new  series  of  papers,  whose  most  noteworthy 
feature  is  an  entire  absence  of  any  new  ideas.  They 
were,  however,  sufficiently  well  received  by  the  public 
to  justify  Nixon  in  having  them  published,  probably 
in  1886,  and  seventeen  years  later  a  new  edition  ap 
peared. 

On  September  26,  1885,  the  Inter-Ocean  began  to 
publish  another  series  of  articles  by  Tourgee,  entitled 
"Letters  to  a  Mugwump,"  signed  "Trueman  Joyce," 
which  appeared  every  Saturday  until  the  middle  of 
November.  As  the  title  implies,  these  letters  were 


ioo  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

addressed  to  the  "man  without  a  party/'  and  advocated 
that  he  should  align  himself  with  some  definite  political 
organization,  preferably,  of  course,  the  Republican 
party.  They  contain  hosts  of  truisms  about  the  neces 
sity  of  political  catharsis,  and  allied  topics.  For  these 
articles,  which  averaged  between  two  and  three 
columns  in  length,  Tourgee  received  fifty  dollars  each, 
and  this  constituted  a  large  part  of  the  $5500  that 
was  his  total  income  for  the  year  1885.  This  income 
also  included  some  money  gained  from  the  sale  of  a 
little  property  which  he  still  had  in  North  Carolina. 
He  had  also  some  real  estate  in  Kingsville,  Ohio, 
whose  rental  afforded  him  during  his  whole  life  prob 
ably  about  enough  money  to  pay  for  the  expenses  in 
curred  by  his  fishing  trips.  But  the  bills  for  this  year 
were  numerous,  and  they,  including  the  upkeep  of 
Thorheim  and  the  interest  on  Our  Continent  debts, 
left  no  surplus  whatever. 

Having  found  that  his  tirades  against  Cleveland 
apparently  had  pleased  a  certain  cantankerous  element 
in  the  Republican  party,  Tourgee  began  a  third  col 
lection  of  articles  that  bristled  with  scurrilous  utter 
ances  against  the  president  in  the  Inter-Ocean  on 
March  4,  1886,  and  they  ran  bi-monthly  until  eighteen 
numbers  had  appeared.  This  time  the  title  chosen  was 
"A  Child  of  Luck,"  and  the  signature  was  again 
"Siva."  The  only  remarkable  thing  in  this  third  dia 
tribe  against  Democrats  generally  and  Cleveland  very 
particularly,  is  the  astonishing  amount  of  ingenuity 
displayed  in  saying  nothing  new  or  of  any  special 
value  in  an  innumerable  variety  of  ways.  There  is 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  101 

again  evident  the  same  debonair,  patronizing1,  cheaply 
familiar,  uncle-to-nephew  tone  that  had  characterized 
the  first  two  series.  Since  these  three  sets  of  papers 
were  entirely  too  innocuous  to  cause  Cleveland  to  pay 
the  least  attention  to  them  (except  that  he  may  have 
remarked  that  the  "writer  is  probably  some  government 
Diogenes,  who  is  afraid  I  will  deprive  him  of  his  tub 
or  will  stand  in  his  sunshine"  1),  there  is  no  need  to 
make  any  further  comment  on  them.  Comment  might 
better  be  made  on  the  fact  that  in  1886  Tourgee's  lec 
tures  were  going  very  badly,  for  popular  interest  in 
them  was  decreasing,  as  Mrs.  Tourgee's  diary  plainly 
shows.  Whereas  he  had  usually  received  $100  per  lec 
ture,  there  is  a  record  of  one  which  he  was  now  glad 
to  deliver  for  thirty-five  dollars ;  and  at  this  time  the 
family  bills  were  allowed  to  run  until  they  were  several 
months  overdue. 

The  year  1887  was  marked  by  the  publication  of 
two  more  novels,  in  which  for  the  first  time  Southern 
questions  do  not  hold  the  place  of  chief  interest,  though 
echoes  of  them  appear  in  the  first  one  published,  which 
was  "Black  Ice."  Mrs.  Tourgee's  diary  for  January 
8,  1885,  states  that  "Albion  today  wrote  the  first  in 
stallment  of  'Black  Ice',"  and  on  May  16,  1887,  "Sent 
ms.  of  'Black  Ice'  to  Fords,  Howard  and  Hulbert," 
by  which  company  it  was  shortly  published.  Tourgee 
needed  the  aid  of  his  physician  while  writing  this  tale, 
as  the  dedication  and  preface  show,  as  well  as  this 
passage  from  the  diary,  April  8,  1885  :  "Looked  over 
what  Albion  had  written  of  'Black  Ice'  and  find  many 

14'A  Man  of  Destiny,"  p.  139. 


102  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

alterations  necessary,  which  it  pains  me  to  call  his 
attention  to  but  it  must  be  done/'  The  book  was  thus 
written  in  a  time  of  great  physical  pain,  caused  largely 
by  Tourgee's  old  wound  and  attacks  of  neuralgia  to 
which  he  was  very  susceptible,  and  one  wishes  that  his 
ill  health  might  account  for  the  fact  that  most  of  the 
weaknesses  which  appeared  in  his  earlier  works  are 
found  here  even  more  prominently;  but  unfortunately 
Tourgee  himself  said  that  the  story  was  written  with 
the  deliberate  intention  of  justifying  the  theory  that 
he  held  in  regard  to  all  fiction — that  the  only  true 
romance  is  that  which  is  built  up  on  those  rare  oc 
currences  which  are  the  result  of  a  series  of  coin 
cidences,  and  that  pure  realism  is  always  to  be  avoided, 
save  in  historical  matters. 

Hence  the  plot  of  this  tale  is  even  more  bizarre  than 
any  of  those  which  preceded  it.  The  chief  figure  is 
Percival  Reynolds,  a  middle-aged  mining  and  civil  en 
gineer,  who,  with  his  wife  and  daughter,  lives  in  a 
pleasant  country  village  apparently  somewhere  in  New 
York.  There  can  be  little  question  that  the  village  is 
really  a  picture  of  Mayville;  the  lake,  whose  "black 
ice"  gives  the  story  its  title,  Chautauqua;  the  house, 
described  with  so  much  care,  Thorheim ;  the  Reynolds 
family,  the  Tourgees;  the  benevolent  old  physician, 
the  family  doctor  to  whom  the  book  is  dedicated,  Dr. 
William  Chace;  and  the  span  of  horses,  those  that 
Tourgee  was  taking  so  much  pride  in  at  that  time. 
Furthermore,  the  reader  is  told  that  two  of  the 
characters  in  the  novel  were  married  at  Columbus, 
Ohio,  on  May  14,  by  the  Reverend  Julius  E.  Gardner, 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  103 

which  is  precisely  autobiographical.  The  first  few 
chapters  present  a  really  pleasant  picture  of  domestic 
tranquillity  in  the  small  village,  and  one  only  desires 
that  Tourgee  might  have  written  the  whole  book  thus ; 
but,  true  to  his  theory,  he  soon  converts  what  might 
have  been  a  rather  charming  picture  of  village  life  into 
a  hodge-podge  of  mystery,  suspense,  fortuitous  com 
binations  of  events,  horror,  and  crime.  The  titles  of 
several  chapters  will  sufficiently  point  out  the  general 
structure  of  the  tale:  "The  Breaking  of  the  Seal"; 
"Some  Raveled  Threads" ;  'The  End  of  the  Chase" ; 
"A  Midnight  Horror" ;  and  "In  the  Pale  Moonlight." 
The  following  passage,  taken  from  the  chapter  called 
"A  Midnight  Horror,"  shows  how  well  Tourgee  had 
mastered  the  art  of  conventional  melodrama : 

"My  heart  was  in  my  throat  as  I  peered  forward  at 
the  roadway  with  unnecessary  care.  A  rustle  in  the 
hemlocks  by  the  roadside  startled  me  as  if  it  had  been 
a  thing  of  terror.  I  pulled  the  reins  and  stopped  the 
surprised  horses  at  the  very  steepest  part  of  the 
declivity.  As  I  did  so  a  shriek,  clear  and  shrill,  rang 
out  of  the  unseen  space  beyond,  and  echoed  and  re 
echoed  across  the  river. 

"  'My  God!'  I  exclaimed,  'that  is  a  cry  for  help!' 

"The  cry  was  repeated,  shriller,  clearer,  and  un 
mistakably  in  a  woman's  voice." 

This  passage  illustrates  why  Tourgee' s  novels  were 
fairly  successful  with  the  public;  and  very  likely  an 
other  reason  for  this  success  was  the  justification,  dwelt 
upon  particularly  in  this  story,  of  coincidence  as  op 
posed  to  the  regularity  of  nature.  "  'Such  things  are 


104  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

"happening"  every  day.  Some  call  them  the  result  of 
chance.  ...  I  may  be  a  fool,  but  such  things,  which 
seem  against  Nature,  are  to  me  conclusive  evidence  of 
One  that  uses  and  controls  Nature.  Call  it  what  you 
will,  I  love  to  call  it  God'"  (p.  405).  The  modern 
reader,  however,  is  much  more  likely  to  designate  this 
theory  of  his  by  some  such  unmetaphysical  term  as  a 
lack  of  constructive  ability,  or  even  sheer  mental  lazi 
ness. 

The  second  book,  which  had  appeared  from  the 
press  of  Roberts  Brothers,  Boston,  about  the  first  of 
September,  was  begun  November  22,  1886,  and  was 
called  "Button's  Inn."  In  writing  this  tale  Tourgee 
was  particularly  interested  in  Mormonism,  which  he 
had  previously  attacked  in  Our  Continent;  but  he 
was  here  more  concerned  in  tracing  its  origin  and  the 
philosophy  of  its  evolution  from  the  religious  life  of 
the  time.  So  it  happens  that  "Button's  Inn"  contains 
about  as  many  disquisitions  on  religion  as  Tourgee's 
earlier  stories  had  contained  chapters  on  history  and 
social  theories.  This  story,  even  more  definitely  than 
the  preceding  one,  has  its  scenes  in  the  vicinity  of 
Thorheim.  "Button's  Inn,"  so  named  for  its  owner, 
had  once  been  a  real  inn,  standing  some  five  or  six 
miles  northwest  of  Mayville  on  Portage  Road — a  name 
given  because  it  was  first  used  by  the  French  and 
Indians  as  the  route  by  which  their  goods  were  carried 
between  lakes  Chautauqua  and  Erie,  the  particular 
points  of  connection  being  Mayville,  Westfield,  and 
Barcelona,  once  a  flourishing  harbor,  now  merely  a 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  105 

moribund  hamlet  marked  chiefly  by  some  dilapidated 
fishermen's  huts  and  a  ramshackle  hotel.  As  in  "Black 
Ice,"  the  pastoral  part  of  the  story  is  rather  pleasant ; 
but  one  learns  in  the  very  first  chapter  that  the  inn 
is  haunted,  and  from  that  point  on  the  story  becomes 
a  blend  of  love  scenes,  suspense,  crime,  and  discussions 
of  Mormonism.  The  events  take  place  mostly  on 
Christmas  Eve  and  Day,  1842,  but  part  of  the  tale  is 
concerned  with  blood-curdling  incidents  that  happened 
eighteen  years  earlier.  The  inn-keeper's  son,  Jack  But 
ton,  is  a  wild  young  fellow  in  his  youth,  who  finally 
commits  a  murder  in  self-defense  and  for  love,  and 
hence  is  forced  to  flee.  He  becomes  a  convert  to 
Mormonism,  and  finally  returns  to  his  old  home,  where 
he  is  unknown  until  he  reveals  himself.  He  is  the  real 
"hero"  of  the  tale,  though  the  more  conventional  one 
(that  is,  the  one  who  marries  the  inevitable  pretty 
girl)  is  Ozro  Evans,  son  of  the  woman  for  love  of 
whom  Jack  Button  committed  murder.  Along  with 
the  pretty  girl,  there  is  bestowed  upon  Ozro  the 
scarcely  less  inevitable  fortune,  inherited  through  his 
father's  will,  which  he  increases  by  means  of  a  com 
bination  of  inventive  genius  and  business  ability.  The 
story  is  almost  wholly  a  refutation  of  the  prefatory 
statement  that  accompanies  it :  "My  purpose  has  been 
faithfully  to  depict  the  life  which  marked  the  period," 
and  instead  represents  merely  another  of  the  countless 
hosts  of  marriages  that  have  taken  place  in  fiction  be 
tween  sentimentality  (in  this  case  both  of  love  and 
religion)  and  Gothic  Romance.  In  this  tale,  as  is 


io6  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

usual  in  Tourgee's  novels,  the  ghost  turns  out  to  be 
one  of  substantial  flesh  and  blood,  which  has  carried 
on  its  nocturnal  activities  by  means  of  a  trap  door. 

The  inventive  genius  of  Ozro  Evans  may  possibly 
be  an  embodiment  of  an  unsuppressed  desire  on  the 
part  of  Tourgee  to  win  recognition  at  the  patent  office. 
During  a  large  part  of  his  life,  he  spent  many  hours 
working  on  mechanical  devices  of  much  variety. 
Hundreds  of  dollars  were  spent  in  these  efforts,  dol 
lars  which  would  have  done  far  better  service  had 
they  been  applied  to  some  of  his  long-standing  debts. 
When  he  was  in  the  South,  he  had  tried  his  brain  and 
hands  on  some  of  the  machinery  of  his  handle  factory, 
and  from  that  time  on  he  never  entirely  left  off  such 
endeavors.  Some  of  his  projects  were,  the  making  of 
an  all-steel  harness  for  horses,  iron  posts,  and  new 
brands  of  wrenches.  He  obtained  one  patent  at  least, 
in  January,  1889,  for  an  hydraulic  motor,  but  it  did 
not  prove  to  be  of  any  financial  value.  Even  while 
Consul  at  Bordeaux,  he  still  kept  on  with  various 
schemes  of  this  sort. 

During  the  following  year  (1888)  two  more  books 
were  published,  in  the  first  of  which  Tourgee  returned 
to  the  South  for  inspiration.  This  was  "Eighty-Nine," 
or  "The  Grand  Master's  Story,"  which  appeared  in 
April.  The  author's  name  is  given  as  Edgar  Henry, 
and  Tourgee  tries  to  make  anonymity  doubly  strong 
by  having  Henry  state  that  he  is  merely  editing  his 
friend's  life  from  an  "original  manuscript."  This 
friend  is  Royal  Owen,  a  Georgian,  who  resembles  the 
usual  Tourgee  hero  in  his  Huguenot  descent,  his 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  107 

farmer  parent,  his  study  of  law,  and  his  love  of  speedy 
horses.  While  the  book  in  general  is  only  a  repetition 
of  oft-repeated  theories  about  the  South  and  contains 
the  usual  historical  and  hortatory  chapters,  Tourgee 
adds  two  new  ideas,  for  one  of  which  he  was  plainly 
enough  indebted  to  the  Ku  Klux  Klan  organization. 
This  is  the  "Order  of  the  Southern  Cross,"  which 
Owen  originates  in  obedience  to  the  dying  injunctions 
of  his  father  that  he  should  help  the  South  in  every 
possible  way.  This  order  advocates  "peaceful  revolu 
tion"  rather  than  the  actively  hostile  methods  of  the 
Ku  Kluxers.  Its  members  are  pledged  not  to  take  up 
arms,  but  by  legal  means  to  prevent  negroes  from 
attaining  inordinate  political  power.  It  is  a  secret 
society  and  its  members  wear  white  clothes  as  a  dis 
guise — both  Ku  Klux  ideas.  The  hero  is  thus  Tourgee' s 
conception  of  the  ideal  Southern  man.  Not  much  is 
said  of  national  education,  but  its  remedial  powers 
are  implied,  and  Cleveland  is  again  sharply  attacked 
for  his  failure  to  put  such  a  policy  into  law.  Tourgee's 
private  correspondence  shows  that  the  book  was  also 
intended  to  be  a  surreptitious  attack  on  the  Standard 
Oil  Company,  because  of  its  monopolistic  practices, 
and  this  explains  the  anonymity  of  the  story.  One  of 
the  characters  in  the  tale  has  lost  all  his  possessions 
and  his  reputation  because  he  opposed  the  activities  of 
the  "Rock  Oil  Company,"  which  is  only  another  name 
for  the  company  actually  existing.  The  purpose  of  the 
book,  then,  was  two-fold :  it  aimed  to  show  that,  while 
at  present  "the  South  was  in  the  saddle  and  monopoly 
in  the  stirrup,"  as  a  poster  advertising  its  appearance 


io8  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

stated,  the  South  could  be  ejected  from  this  saddle  by 
means  of  the  "Order  of  the  Southern  Cross,"  and  that 
monopoly  could  be  forced  out  of  the  stirrup  by  the  use 
of  impartial  legal  justice.  The  title  was  intended  to 
indicate  what  benefit  the  year  1889  would  bestow  upon 
the  United  States,  if,  before  that  time,  these  two 
methods  of  reform  were  employed. 

The  other  book,  which  probably  appeared  in  July, 
was  "Letters  to  a  King/'  most  of  which  had  already 
been  published  piecemeal  in  various  religious  papers. 
The  volume  is  very  similar  to  "Letters  to  a  Mug 
wump,"  except  that  the  mugwump  is  here  treated  more 
respectfully  by  being  honored  with  a  regal  title.  The 
letters  have  the  twofold  aim  of  pointing  out  to  the 
"king"  (who  of  course  symbolizes  the  American  youth 
who  has  recently  come  to  voting  age)  that  he  has  a 
great  responsibility,  and  that  he  must  accordingly  be 
intelligent  in  order  to  meet  its  demands.  This  means, 
as  one  might  surmise,  that  these  letters  gave  Tourgee 
another  chance  to  indulge  in  that  form  of  writing  in 
which  he  was  so  expert — the  production  of  a  chain  of 
age-worn  truisms,  which  rolled  unceasingly  from  his 
affably  condescending  and  unconsciously  tiresome  pen. 

Thus  far  Tourgee  had  written  only  sporadic  series 
of  articles  for  the  Inter-Ocean;  but,  beginning  in  May, 
1888,  he  wrote  regular  weekly  contributions  for  that 
paper  under  the  caption  "A  Bystander's  Notes,"  and 
continued  to  do  so  with  practically  no  omissions  until 
August,  1893.  These  articles,  signed  by  his  own  name, 
constituted  an  enlarged  "Migna,"  the  department  in 
Our  Continent  in  which  he  had  discussed  all  sorts  of 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  109 

political  and  social  questions  in  a  popular  manner. 
"Waving  the  bloody  shirt,"  education,  labor  and 
capital,  foreign  affairs,  book  reviews,  the  World's 
Fair,  attacks  on  the  Democrats,  alternate  defenses  of 
the  Republican  party  and  mild  assaults  on  certain  of 
its  policies  which  were  opposed  to  his  ideas — such 
subjects  as  these  were  discussed  by  him  in  "A  Bystand 
er's  Notes"  many,  many  times.  In  1889  he  used  a  new 
heading,  "A  Tidewatcher's  Thoughts,"  for  part  of  that 
year,  in  which  he  "studied  the  tide  of  today's  life." 
More  and  more  these  articles  became  propagandistic 
in  tone.  In  October,  1891,  he  made  a  public  appeal 
in  the  "Notes"  for  the  formation  of  a  "Citizens'  Equal 
Rights  Association,"  which  was  of  course  intended  for 
the  special  benefit  of  the  negro.  He  formed  this  or 
ganization  because,  as  one  of  his  letters  of  this  period 
states,  he  had  come  to  feel  that  it  was  impossible  to 
influence  the  North  by  merely  writing  and  speaking 
for  the  negro,  and  had  therefore  decided  to  employ 
more  business-like  means.  Tourgee  received  hundreds 
of  letters,  mostly  from  negroes,  praising  him  for  this 
idea,  and  so  started  the  association  on  its  way;  but, 
like  his  other  various  schemes,  it  soon  ended  in  failure. 
The  publishers  of  the  Inter-Ocean  found  it  necessary 
several  times  to  refuse  articles  of  his  which  attacked 
certain  Republican  principles  with  undue  vigor,  because 
the  paper  depended  for  its  success  upon  political 
patronage.  Tourgee  also  wrote  articles  for  this  pub 
lication  on  noteworthy  occasions,  as,  for  example,  on 
the  deaths  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  and  John  A.  Logan, 
the  latter  of  whom  he  extolled  to  the  extent  of  ten 


no  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

thousand  words.  Had  all  these  Inter-Ocean  articles 
appeared  in  book  form  they  would  have  made  some 
eight  or  ten  fat  volumes;  but  this  material  would  have 
been  even  more  ephemeral  than  much  in  his  actually 
published  books. 

"With  Gauge  and  Swallow,  Attorneys,"  which  came 
from  the  press  in  1889,  had  already  been  published  by 
Lippincotts.1  This  book,  as  the  preface  states,  was 
written  to  show  how  much  romance  there  is  in  the  sup 
posedly  matter-of-fact  legal  profession;  it  is  thus  a 
sort  of  sequel  to  "Black  Ice,"  in  which,  it  will  be  re 
called,  the  theory  was  advanced  that  all  life  consists 
of  romance  governed  by  caprice.  It  is  composed  of 
thirteen  short  tales,  each  complete  in  itself,  but  all 
having  the  same  hero,  Gerald  de  Fontaine,  a  farmer's 
son,  who  had  begun  the  study  of  law  as  a  clerk,  but 
who  eventually  attains  eminence  in  the  profession  itself ^ 
The  "romance"  which  is  the  basis  of  each  story  is 
composed  of  the  customary  blend  of  highly  improbable 
concurrences,  technical  legal  matter,  thrilling  crises, 
sentimentality,  and  prescience  on  the  part  of  certain 
individuals,  the  whole  resulting  in  patent  artificiality. 
There  are  several  negroes  in  the  tales,  but  no  specific 
discussion  of  Reconstruction  problems. 

For  1890  several  events  in  Tourgee's  life  are  worthy 
of  note.  He  was  summoned  to  Washington  in  March 
to  address  the  House  Committee  on  Education,  which 
he  did  on  the  thirteenth  of  that  month.  In  his  address 
he  opposed  the  Blair  Educational  Bill  which  was  then 
before  Congress,  and  advocated  one  of  his  own  con- 

1  Lippincott's  Monthly  Magazine,  Philadelphia,  vols.  40-44,  inc. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  in 

coction,  which  formulated  the  same  ideas  that  had  al 
ready  appeared  in  "An  Appeal  to  Csesar."  On  the 
twentieth  of  March  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing, 
from  a  place  in  the  gallery,  the  defeat  of  the  Blair 
bill,  while  on  the  following  day  he  appeared  before  the 
Committee  on  Elections  and  spoke  in  favor  of  a  bill 
then  pending,  which  was  intended  to  protect  the  voter 
without  regard  to  race  or  color.  In  April  he  was 
granted  a  pension  of  six  dollars  a  month,  including 
the  years  from  1863  (in  which  he  had  renounced  his 
pension  from  patriotic  motives)  until  1890,  and  thirty 
dollars  a  month  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  On  June  6, 
according  to  his  wife's  diary,  he  "covered  himself  with 
honor "  by  delivering  a  fiery  address  on  the  wrongs 
done  the  negro  before  the  First  Mohonk  Negro  Con 
ference  in  Ulster  County,  New  York.  During  this 
summer,  in  his  Inter-Ocean  articles,  he  advised  that 
the  Afro-American  League,  an  organization  fairly  ac 
tive  at  that  time,  should  be  a  secret  affair  in  order  that 
it  might  escape  persecution  in  the  South ;  and  for  this 
advice  he  was  roundly  attacked  by  scores  of  news 
papers. 

"First  bound  copies  of  Tactolus'  received/'  says 
Mrs.  Tourgee's  diary  for  March  27,  1890.  This  is  a 
reference  to  "Pactolus  Prime,"  a  book  on  which 
Tourgee  had  been  busy  for  over  a  year.  "I  do  not 
know  what  it  will  do,  but  it  is  a  very  strong  book,  or 
else  I  am  a  very  silly  man,"  he  says,  in  a  letter  about 
it.  In  this  story  he  made  use  of  the  popular  interest  in 
the  Blair  bill  by  writing  a  tale  in  which  this  bill  was 
attacked,  and  his  old  "Appeal  to  Caesar"  remedy 


H2  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

again  recommended.  The  title  of  the  book  is  the  hero's 
name,  and  he  is  a  mulatto  who,  in  order  to  save  his 
children  (in  whom  no  trace  of  negro  blood  appears) 
from  the  stigma  of  their  birth,  hides  from  them  the 
fact  that  he  is  their  father,  and  takes  a  position  as 
boot-black  at  a  Washington  hotel.  Tourgee,  as  usual 
idealizing  the  negro  almost  to  the  point  of  apotheosis, 
endows  Pactolus  with  the  argumentative  ability  and 
technical  knowledge  of  a  lawyer,  and  with  an  uncanny 
prescience  of  men  and  affairs.  The  gentle  reader  is 
asked  to  believe  that  even  men  high  in  the  nation's 
councils  "were  not  ashamed  to  consider  his  warnings" 
(p.  25).  Melodrama  and  mystery  often  meet  to 
gether  in  this  novel,  while  gushing  sentiment  and 
religious  piety  frequently  and  fervently  kiss  ^each 
other.  Pactolus,  from  being  an  unbeliever  in  the 
"white  Christ"  who  "exists  for  whites  only,"  finally 
accepts  Christianity  with  an  ardor  fiery  enough  to  suit 
even  the  idolizers  of  E.  P.  Roe — with  whom,  incident 
ally,  Tourgee  was  always  on  friendly  terms.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  Tourgee  may  have  got  from  Roe 
hints  of  the  device,  so  frequently  used  by  that  per 
petrator  of  several  viciously  virtuous  pieces  of  fiction, 
of  hurling  many  souls  into  the  hopper  of  atheism, 
whence  they  finally  emerge,  after  a  severe  jostling 
and  grinding  process,  as  uniformly  orthodox  Victorian 
Christians.  The  publishers'  preface  to  the  book  refers 
to  Pactolus  as  "the  Edipus  of  American  fiction";  but 
this  particular  "Edipus,"  instead  of  tearing  out  his 
eyes  as  a  self-punishment,  suffers  the  ignoble  fate  of 
being  mortally  injured  by  a  runaway  horse. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  113 

Mrs.  Tourgee's  diary  for  September  17,  1889,  re 
cords  this  item :  "After  a  year  and  a  half  of  thought, 
Albion  began  today  his  story.  The  agony — I  can  use 
no  other  word — of  decision  was  intense.  He  wished 
to  do  so  well — to  put  so  forcibly  the  truths  which  have 
weighed  upon  him  so  long."  This  refers  to  a  story 
first  called  "Nazirema,  or  The  Church  of  the  Golden 
Lilies."  Under  that  title  it  had  appeared  in  The  Ad- 
vance,  a  humanitarian  weekly  journal.1  In  November 
or  December,  1890,  Fords,  Howard  and  Hulbert 
printed  it  under  the  new  title  "Murvale  Eastman, 
Christian  Socialist."  The  Kingsleyean  title  indicates 
the  general  nature  of  the  book,  which  is  a  plea  for 
the  application  of  the  principles  of  Christianity  to 
modern  industrial  problems.  This  doctrine  is  embodied 
in  the  person  of  Murvale  Eastman,  a  "muscular  Chris 
tian,"  pastor  of  the  Church  of  the  Golden  Lilies,  who 
is  of  course  a  paragon  of  "body,  mind,  and  spirit" 
perfection.  He  literally  practices  what  he  preaches  by 
acting  as  driver  of  a  horse-car,  by  which  means  he  pays 
his  own  expenses  and  gets  in  touch  with  life  as  well. 
Finally  he  forms  a  "League  of  Christian  Socialists," 
which  formulates  feasible  methods  of  putting  into 
practice  the  theory  of  the  golden  rule.  There  is  a  re 
minder  of  Tourgee's  early  literary  experiments  in  the 
form  of  a  minister  named  "God's  Anynted  Phue,"  who 
is  the  same  type  of  person  that  he  had  been  when 
Tourgee  used  his  name  in  North  Carolina.  Secrecy, 
sentiment  and  crime  add  their  customary  zest  to  the  tale 
and,  in  spite  of  their  absurdity,  serve  to  make  readable 
1  The  Advance,  Chicago,  vol.  XXXII. 


H4  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

what  would  otherwise  be  a  dry,  theological  tract 
Eastman  succeeds  in  converting  enough  people  to  his 
socialistic  conception  of  Christianity  to  satisfy  even 
the  most  egregious  demands  of  those  who  insist  upon 
religious  conversions  as  a  necessary  concomitant  of 
every  good  novel,  somewhat  as  the  healthier-minded 
Elizabethans  liked  those  plays  best  which  ended  in  a 
general  slaughter  of  the  leading  characters.  The  villain 
of  the  story,  Wilton  Kishu,  richest  member  in  East 
man's  congregation,  after  indulging  in  the  usual 
amount  of  emotional  acrobatics,  is  thoroughly  cleansed 
of  his  former  nefariousness  and  becomes  a  humble 
worshipper  of  the  victorious  Eastman.  Even  the  sub 
stantial  quantity  of  flesh-and-blood  mystery,  crime  and 
sentiment  which  composes  the  narrative  part  of  the 
book  is  not  sufficient  to  conceal  the  very  evident  skele 
ton  of  propaganda  which  constitutes  its  framework. 
One  of  the  members  of  the  firm  that  published  the 
story  objected  strongly,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Tourgee, 
to  the  "elaborate  disquisitions,  which  in  my  opinion 
clog  the  current  of  the  thought  as  much  as  the  possible 
current  of  the  sales."  This  criticism  proved  to  be 
prophetic,  for  the  book  was  by  no  means  a  financial 
success. 

In  the  spring  of  1891,  Tourgee,  who  had  been  ap 
pointed  Honorary  Professor  of  Legal  Ethics  in  the 
Buffalo  Law  School  at  the  time  of  its  foundation  in 
1887,  and  had  already  delivered  lectures  there  during 
the  last  four  years,  gave  a  course  of  lectures  at  that 
institution  on  legal  ethics.  Since  Buffalo  was  only 
some  sixty  miles  from  Thorheim,  he  found  it  easy  to 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  115 

make  the  journey  to  and  fro  without  staying  in  the 
city  over  night.  He  held  this  position  until  he  went 
to  France,  and  the  income  thus  derived  was  especially 
welcome  during  these  years,  for  the  sale  of  his  books 
was  now  steadily  approaching  the  vanishing  point. 

The  Inter-Ocean,  in  July,  1891,  began  a  series  of 
articles  by  Tourgee,  entitled  "Jonn  Workman's  No 
tions/'  which  were  popular  presentations  of  topics  con 
cerned  with  contemporary  political  economy.  John 
Workman  professes  to  be  a  great  friend  of  the  laboring 
classes.  He  discusses  the  historical  background  of  his 
subject,  and  then  applies  the  lessons  drawn  from  this 
study  to  modern  conditions.  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that  Tourgee  was  mainly  indebted  to  Ruskin  for  most 
of  his  ideas  on  political  economy,  for  he  reaches  much 
the  same  conclusions  as  Ruskin  had  reached  twenty 
years  earlier,  and  advocates  many  of  the  same  fantastic 
remedies  which  the  great  Victorian  had  already  sug 
gested.  All  these  articles,  forty-four  in  number,  were 
written  particularly  with  the  intention  of  giving  the 
poor  nobler  ideas  of  labor.  Tourgee  expected  to  publish 
this  series  in  book  form,  and  even  copyrighted  a  forth 
coming  volume;  but  it  never  was  printed,  probably 
because  he  decided  that  the  unsatisfactory  sale  of  his 
previous  works  of  a  similar  nature  did  not  warrant 
any  hope  that  a  new  volume  would  meet  with  any 
better  financial  success. 

Tourgee  went  to  California  on  the  first  day  of  April, 
1892,  and  stayed  there  until  the  eighth  of  May,  in  order 
to  recuperate  from  a  combination  of  ills — the  ever 
troublesome  spinal  wound,  nervousness,  and  general 


n6  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

physical  and  mental  depression.  Hardly  had  he  re 
turned,  much  refreshed,  from  this  brief  respite  from 
almost  unceasing  labor,  when  he  called  down  scathing 
denunciation  upon  himself  because  of  a  prophecy  that 
he  had  made  in  an  Inter-Ocean  article  to  the  effect 
that,  unless  different  governmental  methods  were  used, 
there  would  be  an  uprising  of  the  negroes  within  the 
next  ten  years  that  would  equal  if  not  exceed  the 
French  Revolution  in  terror  and  bloodshed.  Both  the 
Northern  and  Southern  press  joined  in  vigorous  con 
demnation  of  this  new  Tourgee  jeremiad,  but  he  in 
sisted  that  the  prophecy  would  come  true  and  used  the 
columns  of  the  Inter-Ocean  for  defending  himself  in 
his  usual  intrepid  fashion.  As  late  as  1903,  in  a  letter 
to  Nixon,  he  still  maintained  that  such  an  uprising, 
accompanied  with  terrible  slaughter,  was  almost  in 
evitable. 

In  "A  Son  of  Old  Harry,"  published  in  1892, 
Tourgee  employed  some  methods  of  modern  realistic 
fiction  which  he  affected  so  frequently  to  despise.  The 
story  was  written  to  show  that  no  one  can  escape  from 
an  evil  destiny  if  fate  has  so  ordained  it.  Yet,  while 
the  doctrine  of  fatalism  is  the  foundation  of  the  tale, 
it  contains  little  compelling  power;  for  Tourgee,  in 
the  use  of  coincidence,  not  only  goes  beyond  Thomas 
Hardy,  but  also  comes  very  near  giving  the  story  a 
conventionally  happy  conclusion,  which  would  be 
irritating  if  it  were  not  so  patently  impossible.  In 
other  respects  the  novel  is  characteristic  of  the  Tourgee 
genre:  horses  and  horse-racing  are  even  more  in  evi 
dence  than  in  any  of  his  other  tales;  the  hero,  Hubert 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  117 

Goodwin,  becomes  a  brigadier-general  in  the  Civil 
War;  there  is  much  discussion  of  religious  matters; 
melodrama  plays  its  wonted  inevitable  part;  and  senti 
mentality  oozes  from  almost  every  page,  appearing  in 
an  "eternal  triangle"  in  this  story — a  type  of  emotional 
debauchery,  it  should  thankfully  be  noted,  in  which 
Tourgee  seldom  rioted.  The  racial  problem  is  broached 
several  times,  but  not  to  excess.  The  whole  book  pre 
sents  a  pathetic  picture  of  a  mind  that  was  in  nearly 
all  respects  Victorian,  floundering  in  the  effort  to  make 
literary  capital  of  some  elementary  theories  taken  from 
the  gospel  of  realism ;  a  mind  that,  after  giving  up  this 
vain  attempt,  returns  with  manifest  relief  to  the  com 
fortably  familiar  regions  of  grotesquely  impossible 
romance. 

The  Chicago  World's  Fair  called  forth  Tourgee's 
next  volume,  written  with  deliberate  intent  to  make 
money  out  of  that  international  event.  "Out  of  the 
Sunset  Sea,"  which  appeared  early  in  1893,  recounts 
in  the  first  person  the  adventures  of  an  Englishman, 
Arthur  Lake,  who,  after  divers  exciting  experiences 
in  both  love  and  war,  embarks  with  Columbus  on  his 
voyage  of  discovery,  and  later  succumbs  to  the  lust 
for  gold  that  seized  so  many  adventurers  at  that  time. 
This,  Tourgee's  only  experiment  in  historical  romance 
outside  of  his  own  country,  is  in  some  respects  his 
most  successful  book.  He  himself  thought  that  it  con 
tained  his  best  writing,  and  there  are  good  grounds  for 
agreeing  with  this  opinion.  First  of  all,  it  is  not  a 
novel  of  purpose,  and  hence  is  primarily  a  story,  one 
that  abounds  in  active  and  swift  narration,  with  no 


n8  .  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

pauses  for  pointing  the  morals  that  blemish  rather  than 
adorn  most  of  his  tales.  Furthermore,  his  other  faults 
are  less  in  evidence  here :  there  is  less  melodrama  than 
is  customary,  sentiment  is  kept  well  under  control,  and 
piety  is  fortunately  almost  completely  absent.  The 
characters  are  of  course  perfectly  conventional,  the 
hero  being  the  ordinary  swash-buckler  so  common  in 
stories  of  adventure;  but  after  all,  in  a  novel  of  this 
kind  characterization  is  of  secondary  importance.  An 
almost  complete  absence  of  that  constant  straining  for 
effect  which  is  so  noticeable  in  his  other  stories,  results 
in  the  presence  of  something  that  is  almost,  if  not  quite, 
charm.  In  general  there  is  nothing  of  originality  in 
the  story,  but  Tourgee  in  it  did  fairly  well  what  many 
have  done  poorly  and  only  a  few  excellently.  The  con 
versation  of  the  sailors,  however,  is  of  a  sort  that 
certainly  never  was  on  land,  though  possibly  it  may 
have  been  on  sea.  One  reason  why  the  story  is  told 
better  than  usual  is  that  the  plot  was  here  made  almost 
ready  to  hand;  for  it  was  in  the  structure  of  his  plots 
that  Tourgee  was  generally  weakest,  weaker  even  than 
in  character  drawing.  Another  reason  is  that  the  sub 
ject  furnished  all  the  romance  necessary  without  the 
necessity  of  painfully  seeking  it.  The  volume  was 
popularized  by  drawings  made  by  his  daughter,  Aimee, 
who  also  illustrated  several  of  his  other  works. 

One  of  the  books  so  decorated  was  "An  Outing  with 
the  Queen  of  Hearts,"  which  appeared  in  1894,  and 
is  a  pleasant  pastoral  sketch.  The  "Queen"  is  Mrs. 
Tourgee,  whose  unfailing  counsel  and  assistance 
merited  a  greater  reward  than  this  small  volume  gave. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  119 

But,  small  as  the  book  is,  it  shows  how  deep  and 
abiding  was  the  affection  of  husband  and  wife,  despite 
the  temporary  vexations  that  depressing  financial 
troubles  occasionally  caused.  This  story,  as  well  as 
"Out  of  the  Sunset  Sea,"  has  some  real  charm;  a 
charm  that  is,  however,  often  distinctly  impaired  by 
bitterly  one-sided  attacks  on  modern  ideas  of  love. 
But  the  glimpses  of  quiet,  undisturbed  nature,  of 
fishing  and  exploring,  slight  as  they  are,  nevertheless 
will  probably  remain  with  the  reader  long  after  both 
the  plots  and  characters  of  some  of  Tourgee's  more 
pretentious  literary  efforts  have  vanished  from  the 
mind. 

From  this  time  until  the  spring  of  1895,  there  is 
little  known  about  Tourgee  that  is  of  interest.  "A  By 
stander's  Notes"  had  been  discontinued  by  the  Inter- 
Ocean  in  August,  1893,  and  this  suspension  caused 
worry  that  was  not  alleviated  until  Tourgee  was  al 
lowed,  some  four  months  later,  to  resume  the  series. 
In  January,  1894,  a  second  series  of  articles  on  "A 
Man  of  Destiny,'*  once  more  by  "Siva,"  was  begun  and 
continued  weekly  till  the  following  April.  This  new 
production  was  such  in  name  only,  for  nothing  novel 
was  added  in  this  last  flamboyant  fulmination  against 
Cleveland.  At  the  end  of  this  year,  Tourgee's  ac 
tivities  with  the  Inter-Ocean  were  ended  until  he  went 
to  France,  from  which  place  he  occasionally  sent  his 
ideas.  His  long  and  fairly  regular  connection  with 
this  paper  was  certainly  his  most  successful  financial 
enterprise,  for  it  was  the  only  one  that  had  given 
him  a  fairly  steady  income.  Visions  of  political  office 


120  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

again  haunted  him  in  1894,  and  several  papers  in  his 
vicinity  advocated  his  election  to  Congress;  but  he 
was  opposed  by  most  of  the  organs  even  of  his  own 
party,  though  one  had  the  temerity  to  suggest  his  name 
as  vice-presidential  candidate  for  1896.  But  the  slight 
sentiment  in  favor  of  his  nomination  to  Congress  soon 
died  an  even  swifter  natural  death  than  is  ordinary  in 
politics,  and  with  its  decease  all  of  Tourgee' s  hopes  for 
popular  approval  of  his  political  theories  flickered  out 
forever. 

Still  unwilling  to  learn,  or  more  probably  incapable, 
harsh  though  the  word  is,  of  learning  from  the  stern 
teachings  of  experience,  in  the  spring  of  1895  Tourgee 
started  another  journalistic  venture  in  that  optimistic 
frame  of  mind  which  he  always  displayed  when  be 
ginning  to  chase  the  ignis  fatuits  of  business  success. 
On  March  20,  there  appeared  from  rooms  at  457 
Washington  Street,  Buffalo,  The  Basis;  A  Journal  of 
Citizenship,  edited  by  Tourgee.  Its  front  page  pro 
claimed  its  modest  mission  to  the  world  in  flaring  type. 
That  mission  was  to  be  "The  Basis  of  Public  Peace, 
Personal  Security,  Equal  Right,  Justice  to  All,  Good 
Laws,  Good  Government,  National  Prosperity,  Im 
proved  Conditions,  AND  OF  A  BETTER  WORLD 
TOMORROW."  The  first  editorial  states  that  The 
Basis  is  a  "thirty-two  page  weekly  which  hopes  to 
grow  to  forty-eight  pages  and  then  to  sixty-four  if 
the  favor  of  the  public  will  permit."  The  general  idea 
of  the  publication,  as  announced,  was  to  promote  "ap 
plied  Christianity/'  the  theory  which  had  already 
been  advanced  in  "Murvale  Eastman";  but  it  is  very 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  121 

plain  that  a  scarcely  secondary  purpose  was  to  furnish 
a  medium  for  "A  Bystander's  Notes"  and  various  other 
articles  of  Tourgee's,  together  with  several  by  his 
daughter,  who  signed  herself  "Henry  Churton  Jr.," 
which  had  been  rejected  by  certain  magazines. 
"Migna,"  which  had  been  sleeping  in  a  corner  of  the 
grave  where  Our  Continent  had  rested  for  eleven  years, 
was  now  exhumed  and  at  least  partially  revivified.  The 
history  of  that  unfortunate  magazine  now  began  to  be 
repeated,  and  the  next  year  was  painfully  employed  in 
disheartening  efforts  to  make  The  Basis  succeed,  at 
tempts  that  were  hindered  by  almost  constant  ill- 
health.  As  early  as  July,  Tourgee's  private  corre 
spondence  shows  that  the  magazine  was  likely  to  stop 
at  any  time  because  of  insufficient  funds.  Efforts  to 
merge  it  with  several  other  publications  had  failed, 
since  the  editors  were  too  wary.  Tourgee  stated  that 
he  himself,  his  wife,  daughter,  and  one  office  girl  did 
the  whole  of  the  work  for  the  magazine,  which  had 
only  eight  hundred  subscribers.  By  December  it  had 
become  necessary  to  limit  the  publication  to  once  a 
month,  and  in  April,  1896,  the  last  number  came 
forth. 

The  rest  of  this  year  was  spent  in  the  attempt  to  ob 
tain  publication  for  articles  which  almost  always  were 
rejected,  but  two  small  volumes  finally  found  their 
way  into  print.  The  first  of  these,  "The  War  of  the 
Standards,"  is  a  study  in  "coin  and  credit  versus  coin 
without  credit" ;  in  other  words,  it  is  a  series  of  cam 
paign  documents.  They  are  largely  historical,  but 
those  at  the  end  discuss  certain  concrete  methods  of 


122  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

dealing  with  the  currency  problem  that  was  the  chief 
issue  in  the  campaign  of  1896.  Possibly  of  more  in 
terest,  because  it  is  fiction,  is  "The  Mortgage  on  the 
Hip-Roof  House."  It  is  a  novelette  of  the  Horatio 
Alger  type,  in  which  there  are  a  villain,  a  poor  but 
lovable  grandfather,  a  more  lovable  granddaughter, 
an  adopted  grandson  (adopted  of  course  that  he  may 
wed  the  granddaughter),  and  a  kindly  as  well  as  rich 
benefactor.  The  plot  centers  about  the  necessity  of 
raising  a  mortgage  on  the  family  home,  which  is 
situated  near  Lake  Erie.  Needless  to  say,  it  is  raised, 
villainy  is  properly  punished,  and  poverty-stricken, 
spotless  virtue  is  amply  recompensed  for  its  unswerv 
ing  adherence  to  the  straight  and  narrow  path. 

Tourgee  went  to  New  York  in  the  autumn  of  1896, 
and  remained  there  for  several  months  seeking  pub 
lishers  for  various  articles,  as  well  as  an  opportunity 
to  campaign  for  McKinley.  His  letters  to  his  wife 
during  this  period  often  threatened  suicide  unless  he 
found  some  means  of  sustenance.  At  last  this  was  ob 
tained  through  campaign  speeches  made  for  the  Re 
publicans,  and  thus  the  tension  caused  by  a  really 
desperate  financial  situation  was  relieved.  After  such 
experiences  as  these,  it  is  no  cause  for  wonder  that, 
on  December  31,  Mrs.  Tourgee  exclaimed,  in  the 
privacy  of  her  diary :  "The  close  of  the  most  distress 
ful  year  of  my  life!  Pray  God  the  next  may  be 
different!" 

Fortunately  it  was,  for  in  1897  Tourgee  was  ap 
pointed  Consul  at  Bordeaux.  In  January  he  began 
to  send  letters  to  the  President  as  well  as  to  various 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  123 

men  in  Congress  in  regard  to  a  consulship  at  Man 
chester.  He  received  some  encouragement  in  this 
attempt,  because  of  which  Mrs.  Tourgee  went  to 
Washington  in  April  and  had  many  personal  confer 
ences  with  those  in  authority.  As  a  result  of  these 
conferences,  Bordeaux  was  finally  chosen,  since  it 
was  the  most  available  position.  On  May  6,  President 
McKinley  informed  Mrs.  Tourgee  that  the  appoint 
ment  to  Bordeaux  was  settled,  and  one  week  later  the 
commission  as  Consul  to  that  place  was  granted  her 
husband.  The  next  six  weeks  were  occupied  in 
settling  up  business  affairs,  and  on  July  3  Tourgee  took 
what  was  to  be  his  final  look  at  his  native  country, 
and,  accompanied  by  his  wife,  sailed  for  France. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BORDEAUX 

AFTER  a  stop  at  Gibraltar,  Tourgee  landed  on  the 
southern  coast  of  France,  arrived  at  Bordeaux  on  July 
22,  and  took  formal  charge  of  his  office  on  August  2. 
The  duties  incumbent  upon  him  were  not  arduous,  and, 
had  his  health  been  good,  there  would  have  been  much 
happiness  in  store  for  him  and  his  .family,  for  the 
daughter  came  to  Bordeaux  shortly  after  her  parents. 
But  the  next  eight  years  was  a  time  of  steadily  de^_ 
clining  vigor  for  Tourgee,  broken  by  periods  of  ap 
parently  returning  strength;  not  only  his  old  wounds, 
but  a  complication  resulting  from  them  which  took 
the  form  of  diabetes,  became  gradually  more  malignant. 
And  yet  it  was  not  on  the  whole  an  unhappy  period, 
at  least  in  comparison  to  the  preceding  six  or  eight 
years,  for  his  income  was  now  definite  and  regular. 

In  1898  his  old  publishers,  Fords,  Howard  and 
Hulbert,  brought  out  a  volume  of  three  stories,  of 
which  the  first  furnished  the  title,  "The  Man  Who 
Outlived  Himself."  In  the  caption  story,  Tourgee 
again  shows  that  interest  in  things  supernatural  which 
had  already  been  manifested  in  some  of  his  writings. 
The  leading  figure  in  the  story  purports  to  have  been 

124 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  125 

one  of  the  inmates  at  Libby  prison  when  Tourgee  was 
there,  and  he  entrusts  the  "strange  story"  of  his  life 
to  his  old  fellow-prisoner.  The  tale,  which  contains 
occasional  gruesome  touches  and  uncanny  situations 
that  suggest  Poe,  recounts  how  one  Arthur  Quitman 
died  while  ?.n  the  midst  of  financial  troubles,  came  back 
to  life,  and  finally  recovered  his  memory,  together 
with  his  wife  and  daughter — much  of  which  is  sug 
gestive  of  autobiography.  The  second  story,  "Poor 
Joel  Pike/'  is  reminiscent  of  Tourgee's  lawyer  days. 
Joel  Pike  is  a  Pactolus  Prime-like  figure  who  suffers 
under  the  suspicion  of  being  a  villain,  whereas  he  is 
eventually  shown  to  be  almost  an  angel — albeit  a  very 
ugly  one — in  disguise.  Autobiography,  mystery, 
problems  of  Reconstruction,  love,  and  a  dark,  schem 
ing  villain  who  is  finally  reformed,  equally  spoil  the 
closing  story  in  the  volume,  "The  Grave  of  Tante 
Angelique." 

In  September  of  this  year,  Tourgee's  connection 
with  the  Inter-Ocean,  to  which  he  had  made  regular 
contributions  since  coming  to  France,  particularly 
patriotic  articles  dealing  with  the  Spanish- American 
War,  was  finally  severed.  Three  months  later  the 
family  took  up  residence  for  the  winter  at  the  Villa 
Trocadero,  a  pretty  spot  on  the  seacoast  about  fifty 
miles  from  Bordeaux,  whither  Tourgee  went  because 
in  it  were  medical  baths  which  had  been  prescribed  for 
him.  The  family  remained  there  until  April,  1899, 
when,  upon  their  return  to  Bordeaux,  a  disagreeable 
incident  occurred.  On  the  twelfth  of  that  month,  a 
bailiff,  with  a  writ  of  saisie-gagerie  issued  by  local 


126  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

authorities,  entered  Tourgee's  house  and,  after 
handling  him  and  his  daughter  roughly,  took  an  in 
ventory  of  the  furniture  and  made  insulting  remarks 
about  the  American  flag.  This  action  raised  the  ques 
tion  of  the  inviolability  of  consular  material,  sustained 
by  treaty,  and  accordingly  Tourgee  immediately  sent 
all  the  facts  to  the  mayor  of  Bordeaux  and  to  Wash 
ington.  After  a  good  deal  of  diplomatic  corre 
spondence,  the  matter  was  satisfactorily  adjusted. 

During  the  coming  summer  and  until  well  on  in 
1900,  Tourgee's  health  was  apparently  the  best  it  had 
been  for  several  years,  as  a  result  of  which  he  resumed 
writing,  mostly  about  political  matters,  for  several 
magazines.  For  the  next  two  years  his  health  was 
still  such  that  he  was  able  to  do  a  little  literary  work 
at  various  times.  One  item  is  of  much  interest  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  jt  shows  how  absolutely  at  this 
time  Tourgee  had  given  up  all  the  educational  theories 
which  had  been  the  foundation  of  the  Reconstruction 
novels  and  of  much  of  his  other  writings.  In  a  letter 
to  President  Roosevelt,  on  October  21,  1901,  Tourgee 
first  congratulates  him  for  the  moral  courage  shown 
in  his  invitation  to  Booker  T.  Washington  to  dine  with 
him,  and  then  says,  apropos  of  the  question  of  national 
education  as  a  remedy  for  the  negro  problem : 

"It  was  a  genuine  fool's  notion.  I  sincerely  believed 
at  that  time  (1880)  that  education  and  Christianity 
were  infallible  solvents  of  all  the  evils  which  have 
resulted  from  the  white  man's  claim  of  individual  su 
periority.  .  .  .  Today  I  am  ashamed  to  have  been  that 
sort  of  a  fool.  I  realize  now  that  .  .  education  does 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE         -       127 

not  eradicate  prejudice,  but  intensifies  it — Christianity 
does  not  condemn  or  prevent  injustice  done  to  the  weak 
by  the  strong,  but  encourages  and  excuses  it." 

This  letter  is  clear  proof  that  the  rosy  visions  about 
humanity's  betterment  which  Tourgee  had  so  long  en 
tertained  had  now  entirely  faded.  The  peevish,  Timon- 
of-Athens  tone  (attributable  in  part  perhaps  to 
Tourgee's  state  of  health)  here  manifested  is  obviously 
enough  that  which  is  usually  assumed  by  most  would- 
be  alleviators  of  human  ills,  when  their  theories,  based 
upon  the  insecure  foundations  of  prejudice,  sentiment, 
and  the  self-satisfaction  derived  from  blind  adherence 
to  their  own  plan  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others,  have 
been  finally  proved  false  by  the  beneficent  corrosion 
of  time. 

In  this  same  year  was  published  what  was  probably 
the  last  literary  effort  of  much  length  undertaken  by 
Tourgee,  and  it  is  an  only  too  painful  evidence  that 
his  fountain  of  inspiration  had  not  only  ceased  to  spurt 
but  almost  even  to  bubble.  In  the  National  Tribune, 
Washington,  D.  C,  there  appeared  weekly  during 
March  and  April,  1901,  successive  chapters  of  a  novel 
ette,  'The  Summerdale  Brabble/'  The  action  begins 
in  Summerdale,  Massachusetts,  but  soon  switches  to 
Tourgee's  old  home  at  Mayville,  and  local  scenery 
thence  plays  a  large  part  in  the  story.  Hero  and 
heroine  are  both  even  more  extraordinary  for  wealth, 
good  looks,  and  general  personal  attainments  than  had 
been  customary  in  Tourgee's  works.  The  only  thing 
which  prevents  the  tale  from  being  an  almost  perfect 
example  of  consistently  impeccable  dulness  in  plot, 


128  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

character  types,  and  action,  is  that  it  contains  no  real 
reprobate  who  has  the  blood-curdling  attributes  of  all 
orthodox  bad  people. 

The  current  of  life  ran  smoothly  for  Tourgee  in 
1902,  but  the  next  year  brought  renewed  troubles  for 
both  body  and  mind.  On  June  25,  1903,  he  received 
a  message  from  Washington  inquiring  whether  he 
would  like  a  position  as  Consul-General  at  Halifax. 
He  at  once  replied,  stating  that  he  much  preferred  to 
remain  at  his  present  post ;  but  several  weeks  later  an 
official  announcement  came  that  he  had  been  appointed 
Consul-General  at  the  newly  suggested  post.  Though 
deeply  hurt  at  what  he  regarded  as  a  personal  rebuff, 
he  replied  in  a  quiet  letter,  maintaining  that  he  could 
not  go  to  Halifax  because  the  rigorous  climate  there 
would  probably  be  disastrous  both  to  him  and  his 
weak  daughter.  In  response,  he  was  told  that  if  he 
preferred  he  could  go  to  Prague  or  the  West  Indies, 
but  that  his  successor  at  Bordeaux  had  already  been 
appointed.  This  last  communication  alarmed  Mrs. 
Tourgee  so  much  that  she  dared  not  show  it  to  her 
husband,  but  instead  wrote  a  pleading  letter  to  Presi 
dent  Roosevelt.  Having  waited  in  vain  for  a  reply, 
she  sailed  on  July  25  for  the  United  States,  determined 
to  have  a  personal  interview  with  the  President.  No 
sooner  had  she  landed  in  New  York  than  she  received 
a  cablegram  stating  that  Tourgee  was  to  be  permitted 
to  remain  at  Bordeaux  "because  of  Madam's  letter  to 
the  President."  1  But  this  affair  had  a  most  disquiet 
ing  effect  upon  her  husband,  for,  in  his  wife's  own 

1  The  Buffalo  Express,  December  12,  1909. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  .  129 

words,  he  "never  recovered  from  the  shock  of  this  ex 
perience,  and  though  he  lived  nearly  two  years  after, 
he  was  never  again  his  bright,  hopeful  self."  l  The 
active  cause  for  this  episode  was  that  certain  dealers 
in  hides  in  Bordeaux  thought  that  Tourgee  was  too 
strict  in  his  regulations  concerning  exportations,  and 
accordingly  made  complaints  to  the  authorities.  It 
should  be  noted  that  Tourgee  was  never  in  his  life 
in  Halifax,  though  several  abbreviated  biographies  of 
him  state  that  he  was  Consul-General  there  during  the 
last  years  of  his  life. 

Meanwhile  his  health  was  steadily  declining,  though 
at  times  he  appeared  almost  well ;  and  from  this  period 
on  his  wife  did  practically  all  the  business  connected 
with  his  office.  A  letter  of  his,  dated  November  23, 
1904,  gives  his  own  estimate  of  his  condition:  "My 
health  was  very  bad  for  several  months  [1904],  but  in 
August  last  the  doctors  made  an  excavation  in  my  hip 
and  took  out  a  piece  of  lead  which  must  have  been 
wandering  around  in  my  anatomy  since  Perryville.  I 
have  been  much  better  since.  I  now  weigh  175  and 
feel  almost  well,  except  for  my  hands  which  are  pain 
fully  hypersensitive — making  writing  a  burden  which 
has  so  long  been  a  delight."  This  letter  shows  that 
unwarranted  hope  of  recovery  which  so  often  charac 
terizes  persons  whose  course  is  almost  run.  Uric  acid 
poison  was  now  filling  Tourgee's  system,  and  he  also 
frequently  experienced  choking  spells  caused  by  water 
on  the  lungs  which  had  to  be  drawn  off  several  times. 
On  December  30,  1904,  Mrs.  Tourgee  said  in  her  diary, 


130  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

"Began  reports  which  may  be  for  the  last  time."  She 
of  course  knew  that  the  end  could  not  be  far  off.  Dur 
ing  the  spring  of  1905,  Tourgee  was  dilirious  much 
of  the  time,  and  often  thought  that  he  was  dying, 
though  he  still  sat  up  as  late  as  April  25. 

Mrs.  Tourgee's  diary,  which  had  so  faithfully 
narrated  the  events  of  her  husband's  life  for  more 
than  twenty-five  years,  on  May  21,  1905,  recorded  the 
closing  scene  thus :  "The  sun  shines  brightly,  but  it  is 
a  dark  day  for  us.  Albion  breathed  his  last  at  12  115 
this  morning.  My  heart  is  wrung.  I  can  say  no 
more."  Two  days  later  funeral  services  were  held  in 
the  English  church  at  Bordeaux,  and  the  body  was  im 
mediately  taken  to  a  crematory  at  Paris.  Mrs.  Tourgee 
and  her  daughter  spent  the  next  few  months  in 
settling  up  the  business  affairs  of  the  Consulate  office, 
and  in  November  returned  to  Thorheim,  bringing  with 
them  the  ashes  of  the  husband  and  father,  which  were 
shortly  interred  in  the  local  cemetery  after  appropriate 
ceremonies  had  been  conducted  by  the  Grand  Army 
of  the  Republic.  A  simple  granite  shaft  was  soon 
erected  over  the  ashes,  which  bears  the  inscription : 

"I  pray  thee  then 
Write  me  as  one  that  loves  his  fellow-men." 

In  personal  appearance,  Tourgee  was  of  medium 
height,  and,  while  a  young  man,  was  very  slim,  as  a 
photograph  taken  when  he  was  in  the  army  witnesses.1 
As  he  grew  older,  he  increased  considerably  in  weight 
and  breadth,  and  during  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years 
*"The  Story  of  a  Thousand,"  p.  209. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  131 

of  his  life  was  quite  obese — a  result  not  only  of  age 
but  of  disease  as  well.  His  hair  was  very  dark  brown 
and  he  wore  a  heavy  moustache ;  his  face  was  perhaps 
strong  rather  than  handsome,  though  he  was  possibly 
better  looking  than  the  average  man.  He  unequivocably 
liked  at  least  one  custom  of  the  Southerners — their 
style  of  dress,  which  he  always  followed  after  his  re 
turn  North,  particularly  as  regards  the  wide-brimmed 
hat  for  which  the  "Southern  colonel"  on  our  stage  has 
always  been  conspicuous. 


CHAPTER'VII 
CONCLUSION 

A  CONTINUALLY  lapsing  interest  in  his  novels  with 
their  already  antiquated  or  largely  discredited  theories, 
and  an  unbroken  absence  of  eight  years  from  his  native 
land  before  his  death  took  place,  account  for  the  fact 
that  there  was  little  critical  comment  about  Tourgee 
or  his  literary  work  after  his  decease.  The  penalty 
of  faint  praise  or  decorous  silence  thus  inflicted  upon 
him  was  that  which  is  usually  paid  by  men  of  his  type: 
opportunists,  who  make  literary  capital  out  of  some 
tremendous  social  convulsion  whose  surgings  are  soon 
calmed  by  legislative  measures,  or  simply  by  the 
progress  of  time  with  its  accompanying  increase  of 
more  charitable,  because  less  interested,  opinions; 
politicians,  whose  acrid  partisanship,  which  stains  not 
merely  their  political  views  but  also  their  opinions  on 
nearly  all  those  public  and  private  questions  which 
admit  of  manifold  interpretations  and  solutions,  almost 
completely  ostracises  them  from  fellowship  with  those 
who  believe  that  one  of  the  chief  glories  of  literature 
is  the  possibility  it  affords  for  a  comity  of  infinitely 
varied  ideas ;  writers,  whose  literary  style  depends  for 

132 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  133 

its  effectiveness  largely  upon  the  persistent  use  of 
devices  long  since  hoary  with  age.  And  by  this  time 
it  should  be  evident  that  Tourgee's  works  come,  with 
almost  unbroken  regularity,  under  this  three-fold 
classification :  they  give  vent  to  narrow,  cramped  ideas; 
they  are  the  products  of  particular,  and  therefore 
temporary,  social  conditions;  they  lack  stylistic  dis 
tinction. 

One  subject  but  little  touched  upon  thus  far  con 
cerns  Tourgee's  opinions  about  some  of  the  chief 
writers  of  his  day.  His  views  of  his  contemporaries 
are  to  be  found  mostly  in  Our  Continent,  but  he 
occasionally  interpolated  them  in  his  novels.  It  was 
of  course  a  maxim  of  his  literary  as  well  as  political 
faith  to  admire  only  those  writers  whose  minds  ran  in 
much  the  same  channels  as  his  own.  This  means,  in 
general,  that  the  Victorians  were  the  objects  of  his 
adulation.  Particularly  did  he  reverence  them  for  the 
chief  article  in  their  creed :  the  interpretation  of  every 
thing  terrestrial  by  what  they  conceived  to  be  celestial 
standards.  That  idea  which  permeates  so  many  of 
their  writings,  "And  the  Lord  spake  unto  Moses,  say 
ing" — whatever  any  particular  Victorian  Moses 
thought  the  Lord  commanded  him  to  write  for  the  bet 
terment  of  humanity,  to  Tourgee's  mind  constituted 
their  greatest  charm.  Thus  in  an  article  on  Reade  and 
Trollope  he  says:  "He  [Reade]  recognized  the  under 
lying  truth  of  all  artistic  production,  that  its  highest 
purpose  is  to  teach  a  noble  lesson."  1  In  another  article, 

1  Our  Continent,  Vol.  V,  pp.  634-5. 


134  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

entitled  "The  King  is  Dead!"  he  praises  Longfellow 
in  these  words:  "He  was  easily  the  first  of  American 
poets."  He  "won  his  crown  by  Americanizing  the 
world's  life.  ...  As  compared  with  England's  poet 
laureate  he  was  perhaps  less  rich  in  fervid  imagery, 
but  he  was  of  deeper  and  tenderer  tone,  of  broader  and 
riper  manhood,  closer  akin  to  the  great  common  heart 
and  less  tainted  with  any  narrow  and  bigoted  exclusive- 
ness."  *  The  same  article  contains  much  more  perf  ervid 
praise  of  Longfellow's  Americanism.  Tourgee,  indeed, 
thought  that  American  literature  was  destined  to  sur 
pass  that  of  the  Old  World,  as  is  evinced  by  an  article 
called  "Americanism  in  Literature,"  in  which  there 
are  these  passages :  "The  American  element  in  litera 
ture  is  simply  the  American  element  in  our  thought.  .  .  . 
The  coming  American  novelists  may  choose  to  portray 
the  universal  humanity  only  in  Old  World  phases,  but 
they  will  view  such  foreign  life  from  a  standpoint 
peculiarly  their  own,  and  will  give  new  interpretations 
to  characters  and  events  which  the  Old  World  has  but 
dimly  understood  and  only  half  appreciated."  2  E.  P. 
Roe  was  the  beneficiary  of  a  special  amount  of  lauda 
tion.  "Few  men  have  extended  a  healthier  influence 
upon  the  life  of  today  than  Mr.  Roe.  In  these  times, 
when  the  novel  of  purpose  is  made  a  matter  of  artistic 
ridicule  by  our  over-refined  dilettanti,  and  the  novel 
without  a  purpose  is  corrupting  the  heart  and  brain  of 
the  rising  generation  ...  the  very  large  sales  which 

1  Our  Continent,  Vol.  I,  p.  178. 
d.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  219. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  135 

his  works  have  had  disclose  to  us  the  pleasing  fact 
that  our  American  reading  public  is  not  yet  entirely 
given  over  to  the  worship  of  the  realism  which  insists 
that  fiction  shall  be  given  up  to  the  painting  life  as  it 
is,  dirt  and  all."  *  Tourgee  further  elaborates  his 
belief  in  the  purpose  novel  in  these  words:  "A  novel 
without  a  purpose  is  the  counterpart  of  a  man  without 
a  purpose.  One  written  for  mere  amusement  may  be 
either  good  or  bad,  but  at  the  very  best,  is  only  the  low 
est  form  of  art."  Self-defense  was  probably  the  motive 
which  prompted  the  above  words.  Dickens,  George 
Eliot,  Ruskin,  and  other  lesser  figures  often  received  a, 
word  of  commendation  from  Tourgee;  in  the  case  of 
George  Eliot,  he  failed  to  grasp  the  significance  of  her 
minute  searchings  for  environmental  causes  as  the 
motivations  of  good  and  evil  actions. 

Against  everything  that  savored  of  realism  in  mod 
ern  fiction,  and  against  all  writers  who  did  not  tread 
the  path  of  indisputable  morality,  Tourgee  was  relent 
lessly  hostile.  His  novels  abound  with  references  to 
these  matters.  "Black  Ice"  (pp.  18-19):  "They  [mod 
ern  realists]  tell  us  that  fiction  is  of  necessity  limited  by 
its  sterile  commonplaces  to  laborious  self -dissection 
and  elaborated  display  of  the  results  of  morbid  mental 
anatomy  ...  I  had  come  to  think  that  if  the  life 
which  is  portrayed  in  our  so-called  'realistic  fiction*  is 
a  fair  average  product  of  our  institutions,  the  time 
cannot  be  far  distant  when  the  killing  of  an  American 
will  be  no  more  counted  homicide  than  the  drowning 

1  Our  Continent,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  669. 


136  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

of  supernumerary  puppies."  *  "Button's  Inn"  closes 
with  this  querulous  sentence:  "We  .  .  .  assert  that  pet 
tiness  alone  is  truth  and  declare  that  real  life  is  con 
cerned  only  with  multitudinous  trivialities,  discover 
able  only  by  elaborate  processes  of  morbid  self-dissec 
tion."  "Murvale  Eastman"  (p.  113):  "So,  too,  the 
pessimistic  philosophy  which  calls  itself  'realism*  in 
art  and  literature,  always  is,  and  always  will  be,  at_ 
fault  when  it  comes  to  solve  the  riddle  of  humanity. 
It  says  human  nature,  human  character,  is  a  result  of 
the  operations  of  natural  laws.  So  it  is ;  but  those  laws 
are  not  all  physical,  nor  purely  mental.  The  soul  must 
be  taken  into  account  if  we  would  comprehend  hu 
manity  or  truly  portray  character."  Again  in  the  same 
book  (p.  165)  :  "You  see,  the  'realist'  is  always  ready 
to  believe  anything  mean;  but  anything  decent  and 
manly  he  declares  at  once  to  be  unnatural/'  Also 
(p.  214)  :  "It  is  only  romantic  notions  of  love  and 
virtue  that  we  fear  today;  and  these  we  seek  to  fore 
stall  by  prescribing  for  the  young  soul  the  carefully 
elaborated  daily  record  of  the  world's  infamies,  and 
substituting  'realistic'  impurity  as  a  motive  for  'healthy 
fiction/  instead  of  the  silly  sentimentalism  of  old- 
fashioned  love."  "An  Outing  with  the  Queen  of 
Hearts,"  (pp.  49-50)  :  "I  suppose  we  should  yet  speak 
of  it  [sex  attraction]  as  love,  and  go  on  believing  in 
it  to  the  very  last,  had  not  'realism'  and  the  curious 
contempt  for  all  things  American,  which  has  come  to 
lift  us  up  to  the  sublime  level  of  social  formalism  by 
which  the  society  of  other  lands  is  shaped  into  such 
1  Our  Continent,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  732. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  137 

matchless  excellence,  taught  us  that  belief  in  love,  and 
more  especially  in  married  love,  is  not  merely  the  very 
'worst  possible  form/  but  a  vain  and  weak  credulity 
in  which  only  'the  immature  American*  is  any  longer 
willing  to  admit  himself  so  foolish  as  to  indulge." 
Again  (p.  64)  :  "The  man  who  paints  warts  and  weak 
ness,  sin  and  shame,  may  tell  the  truth;  but  it  is  an 
insignificant  truth,  unworthy  of  the  artist's  skill,  unless 
it  bring  some  lesson  of  cause  or  cure." 

Tourgee's  works  do  not  lack  specific  references  to 
some  of  the  chief  exponents  of  these  modern  ideas,  or 
of  many  other  ideas  that  would  not  bear  the  lynx- 
eyed  scrutiny  of  such  believers  in  strictly  orthodox 
virtue  as  himself.  In  an  article  which  attacks  Emer 
son  for  his  irreverence,  there  occurs  this  sentence :  "A 
disciple  of  Carlyle,  he  regarded  man  as  chiefly  created 
that  he  and  his  master  might  scold  and  scourge  him, 
though  unlike  Carlyle  he  believed  in  and  expected  his 
improvement."  *  Tourgee  abominated  Carlyle ;  he 
praises  Auerbach  because  he  was  a  lover  of  humanity, 
and  hence  just  the  opposite  of  the  "blustering  scold,"2 
Carlyle.  In  "Murvale  Eastman"  (p.  415)  we  are  told 
that  Carlyle  is  "the  cowardliest  of  braggarts  with  his 
dog's  heart  and  envenomed  tongue" ;  while  in  the  same 
book  (p.  454)  we  learn  that  the  chief  impression  which 
Tourgee  obtained  from  reading  the  "French  Revolu 
tion"  was  of  "the  froth  of  Carlyle' s  rabid  ravings." 
Also,  Tourgee  praises  Froude's  biography  of  Carlyle 

1  Our  Continent,  Vol.  I,  p.  242. 
*Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  120. 


138  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

because,  as  he  says,  it  is  just  that  a  "man  who  assumed 
to  denounce  and  scourge  others"  *  ought  not  to  have 
his  own  shortcomings  treated  with  lenity.  Feelings 
of  professional  jealousy  undoubtedly  had  something  to 
do  with  Tourgee's  frequent  snubbing  of  Howells  and 
James,  though  he  was  occasionally  constrained  to  give 
both  some  grudging  praise.  Howells  is  a  "merciless 
satirist  of  Boston  life,  who  paints  its  pettiness  and  self- 
sufficiency  so  deftly  that  his  victims  take  his  ridicule 
for  praise — that  universal  pessimist"  ("Letters  to  a 
King,"  p.  71).  And  while  he  admits  that  "no  modern 
novelist  has  more  grace  and  vigor  or  finer  sense  of 
literary  form"  2  than  Howells,  Tourgee  also  speaks  of 
him  as  "pouring  forth  page  after  page  of  inconceivable 
agony  over  trifles  too  insignificant  for  ordinary  mortals 
to  note.  ...  A  picture  is  not  truthful  merely  because 
it  has  dirt  in  it.  The  province  of  true  art  is  to  portray 
the  meaner  phases  of  nature  only  as  a  foil  for  the 
nobler  and  grander  passions."  3  The  last  sentence  is  of 
great  significance,  for  it  succinctly  states  Tourgee's 
abiding  conception  of  the  function  of  literature.  The 
chief  fault  in  the  works  of  Howells  and  James  is,  ac 
cording  to  Tourgee,  that  the  soul  has  been  left  out.4  He 
positively  abhorred  Hardy.  Of  his  "Two  in  a  Tower" 
he  says:  "Never  was  more  hideousness  conveyed  in 
a  simple  story —  .  .  .  The  realism  of  Zola  is  suffi 
ciently  atrocious,  but  it  is  not  reductive.  .  .  .  — for 

1  Our  Continent,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  698-9. 
•  Ibid.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  733. 
•7Wd.,VoI.  IV,  p.  252. 
Vol.  I,  p.  796. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  139 

cool  sensualism,  expressed  in  decorous  ingenuousness, 
combined  with  ignorance  of  what  woman  really  is,  in 
soul,  feeling  and  purpose,  commend  us  to  Two  in  a 
Tower*."  l  As  an  amusing  contrast  to  these  onslaughts 
on  three  of  the  greatest  novelists  of  the  time,  Tourgee's 
effusive  admiration  for  a  now  almost  forgotten  lady 
novelist  may  be  cited:  "Miss  Rhoda  Broughton  has 
won  for  herself  a  peculiar  place  among  modern  nove 
lists.  She  has  had  her  admirers  by  the  hundred 
thousand,  and  her  critics  in  equal  numbers,  but  of 
imitators  she  thus  far  has  had  none  that  are  worth 
considering.  Her  originality  of  style,  indeed,  renders 
imitation  well  nigh  impossible."  2 

It  was  against  Russian  fiction,  however,  that 
Tourgee  aimed  his  heaviest  verbal  artillery.  Of 
Turgenev  he  does  indeed  admit  that  his  "pen-pictures 
of  lower  Russian  life  were  the  first  step  toward  the 
redemption  and  elevation  of  the  Russian  people" ; 3 
but  he  is  unable  to  find  language  scorching  enough  to 
express  his  contumely  for  Tolstoi,  particularly  because 
of  his  theories  about  love.  These  stabbing  words  may 
be  found  in  "An  Outing  with  the  Queen  of  Hearts" 
(p.  43)  :  "We  are  even  told  that  love  is  no  secure 
foundation  for  happiness  in  married  life,  which  should, 
instead,  be  based  on  'mutual  esteem  and  forbearance/ 
Indeed,  one  of  the  chief  priests  of  this  newfangled 
doctrine  of  life-relations  has  gone  so  far  as  to  declare 
that  marriage  itself  is  'the  most  sinful  form  of  love/ 

1  Our  Continent,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  732-3. 
*Ibid.,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  91. 
Vol.  IV,  p.  411. 


140  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

which  itself,  so  he  assures  us,  is  61  the  devil  and  al 
together  vile.  I  thank  God  that  he  is  not  an  Amer 
ican."  And  in  "Murvale  Eastman"  (p.  214)  we  are 
advised  that  "a  generation  to  whose  lips  the  pessimistic 
foulness  of  Tolstoi  and  his  imitators  has  been  com 
mended  as  an  inspiring  cordial,  not  only  by  the  high 
priests  of  literature,  but  by  ministers  of  God,  is  per 
haps  beyond  fear  of  peril  from  the  highly-spiced  narra 
tives  of  social  peccadilloes  which  abound  in  the  daily 
press."  One  can  scarcely  refrain  from  wondering 
whether  the  strongest  superlatives  in  our  tongue  would 
have  enabled  Tourgee  to  express  even  a  tithe  of  his 
disgust  could  he  have  read,  let  us  say,  "Ann  Veronica" ! 

Toward  science  Tourgee  was  more  charitable  than 
toward  realistic  literature.  He  looked  upon  it  at  best, 
however,  as  of  secondary  importance  in  comparison 
with  the  value  of  the  emotions,  and  was  frankly  sus 
picious  of  some  of  its  hypotheses.  In  "The  Apostle  of 
Evolution,"  *  he  praises  Darwin  for  his  love  of  nature 
and  sweet-tempered  endurance  of  adverse  criticism, 
but  is  non-committal  in  respect  to  the  theory  of  evolu 
tion,  which  he  regarded  of  value  chiefly  because  he 
thought  it  helped  to  substantiate  his  theory  of  moral 
progress.  In  "Murvale  Eastman"  (p.  266)  he  says: 
"Evolution  is  the  law  of  attribute,  whether  it  is  of 
species  or  not.  .  .  .  The  dead  hand  of  an  ancestor 
reaches  often  across  even  a  century  and  grips  us  by 
the  heartstrings.  God  has  consecrated  this  law  to 
human  progress."  And  again  (p.  274)  :  "Science  has 
taught  even  the  most  incredulous  of  saints,  within  the 

1  Our  Continent,  Vol.  I,  p.  226. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  141 

life-time  of  many  now  living,  to  admit  what  was  be 
fore  esteemed  blasphemous,  not  inerely  as  a  fact,  but 
as  a  beautiful  and  harmonious  revelation;  so  that  we 
read  to-day  the  record  of  God's  work  in  veritable  tables 
of  stones  which  his  hand  has  traced  and  his  wisdom 
preserved  for  our  instruction  and  delight."  But  it  was 
exceptions  from  the  law  of  regularity  tha.t  most  ar 
rested  and  fascinated  his  ever-credulous  mind.  A 
passage  from  "A  Son  of  Old  Harry"  (p.  92)  will 
substantiate  this:  "The  student  of  heredity  in  the 
human  family  is  ever  and  anon  confounded  with  seem 
ing  miracles In  spite  of  the  principle  that  like 

produces  like,  we  meet  every  day  with  instances  of 
unlikeness  so  startling  as  to  confound  the  observer, 
and,  for  a  time  at  least,  destroy  all  faith  in  scientific 
theories  of  life."  Tourgee's  belief  in  the  inviolability 
of  the  exceptional,  of  the  miraculous  (in  a  word,  of 
the  romantic),  was  much  stronger  than  his  belief  in 
the  inviolability  of  the  laws  of  heredity  and  environ 
ment.  Ironically  enough,  it  so  happens  that  his  own 
life  is  a  rather  unusually  good  illustration  of  the  work 
ings  of  those  same  laws. 

Much  in  Tourgee's  novels  and  in  nearly  all  his  other 
work  is  of  interest  not  so  much  to  the  student  of 
literature  as  of  politics.  His  devotion  to  his  particular 
party,  as  well  as  his  unconcealed  disdain  for  the  op 
posing  political  faction — a  disdain  that  only  too  often 
expressed  itself  in  numerous  screeds  which  lacked 
dignity,  fairness,  impersonality  and  breadth  of  view, 
and  showed,  in  their  stead,  far  too  much  pettiness, 
superficiality,  pettifoggery,  and  feebly  sardonic  humor 


142  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

— are  quite  characteristic  of  the  political  sound  and 
fury  of  his  day.  The  paper  for  which  he  wrote,  The 
Chicago  Inter-Ocean,  was  one  of  the  chief  sinners  of 
the  time  against  public  good  taste,  and  not  a  few  of 
Tourgee's  splenetic  articles  contributed  to  the  sum  total 
of  its  sins — sins  which  were  probably  the  main  cause 
for  causing  its  loss  of  patronage,  and  eventual 
absorption  by  another  paper.  What  it  lacked  in 
political  fairmindedness  and  foresight,  it  endeavored 
to  atone  for  by  strident  animosities  and  jaundiced 
flapdoodle;  qualities  which  Tourgee,  both  because  of 
his  temperament  and  training,  commonly  found  very 
pleasing  to  his  own  conception  of  partisanship. 

"My  poor  husband !  How  his  life  was  embittered, 
ruined,  by  his  trying  to  do  what  he  had  no  capacity 
to  do!"  Thus  Mrs.  Tourgee  laments,  as  usual  with 
acuteness  of  perception,  the  chief  reason  for  her  hus 
band's  failure  to  win  greater  success  than  was  granted 
him.  Multiplicity  of  interests  was  perhaps  the  main 
cause  why  he  never  attained  lasting  peace  of  mind. 
Had  he  been  content  to  devote  himself  only  to  writing, 
his  life  would  have  been  freed  from  that  continual 
strain  of  slaving  for  the  necessities  of  existence  which 
he  was  subjected  to  during  his  last  twenty  years — 
but  no,  this  would  not  do;  instead,  he  must,  despite  the 
pleading  admonitions  of  friends  and  relatives,  invest 
the  neat  fortune  he  had  won  from  several  of  his  most 
successful  books  in  a  hazardous  journalistic  experi 
ment,  which  resulted  in  a  smash  that  ruined  his 
financial  prospects  forever.  He  must  capitalize  his 
literary  talent;  and  the  result  was  mutually  self-de- 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  143 

structive,  for  both  money  and  mental  peace  were  gone. 
From  this  time  on,  he  was  forced  to  engage  in  an  un 
broken  struggle  to  find  a  market  for  his  various 
literary  efforts,  in  order  to  keep  his  family  in  moder 
ately  good  circumstances;  and  hardly  was  this  goal 
reached  by  means  of  his  appointment  as  Consul  than 
failing  health  ensued  to  cloud  the  last  eight  years  of 
his  life.  "I  would  have  been  a  much  better  writer 
and  far  greater  novelist  had  I  been  content  to  do  less 
pretentious  work,"  Tourgee  says  in  one  of  his  last 
letters;  and  had  he  said  "less  diffuse  work,"  the  self- 
criticism  would  have  been  still  more  pertinent. 

"Somehow  I  have  never  thought  much  about  fame 
and  really  do  not  know  that  I  would  care  to  forego  to 
day's  dinner  for  tomorrow's  praise.  .  .  .  Yet  I  be 
lieve  I  have  the  true  artistic  instinct.  The  idea  of 
carving  out  a  grand  presence,  a  noble  character — of 
impressing  and  at  the  same  time  bettering  humanity — 
is  so  strong  with  me  that  I  find  myself  absolutely 
absorbed  by  it."  Thus  runs  a  passage  from  one  of 
Tourgee's  letters  to  his  daughter,  for  whom  he  always 
coveted  greater  rewards  than  were  ever  granted  him; 
rewards  that,  probably  impossible  of  attainment  by 
her  because  of  insufficient  artistic  and  literary  ability, 
were  made  forever  unattainable  by  an  early  death. 
His  remark  about  fame  should  be  largely  discounted, 
for  he  was  afflicted  with  as  much  of  the  "last  in 
firmity"  as  are  most  literary  men;  whenever  "critic 
peep  or  cynic  bark"  touched  his  works  either  because 
of  their  extreme  ideas  or  artistic  faults,  and  pointed 
out  how  they  had  few  permanent  literary  qualities,  he 


144  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

was  always  ready  to  leap  valiantly  to  their  defense. 
While  at  work  on  any  of  his  novels,  he  was  almost 
completely  absorbed  in  his  task — except  when  the  litre 
of  the  rod  overcame  him.  "There  is  no  happiness  for 
me  except  in  doing — achieving.  If  I  cannot  accom 
plish,  I  prefer  not  to  be,"  he  says  in  another  letter, 
in  which  he  also  significantly  states  that  he  cares 
little  for  music,  but  likes  plays  because  they  pre 
sent  the  multitudinous  activities  of  life;  a  fact,  among 
others,  which  witnesses  that  his  was  a  nature  de 
ficient,  on  the  whole,  in  the  appreciation  of  delicately 
refining  humanistic  values.  He  had  too  much  love  for 
applied  ethics  to  be  much  interested  in  strictly  eclectic 
mental  and  emotional  pursuits.  Not  art  for  art's  sake, 
but  art  for  morality's  sake,  was  what  spurred  his  mind 
to  activity;  and  such  a  conception  of  the  function  of 
literature  peremptorily  excluded  finesse  from  his  writ 
ings.  Serenity,  poise,  austerity,  disinterestedness,  cath 
olicity, — of  such  enduring  literary  values  he  was  almost 
destitute ;  instead,  he  exemplified  that  love  for  applying 
a  quality  of  virtue  by  no  means  always  unstrained  to 
specific  and  concrete  problems  of  the  day,  which, 
despite  its  frequent  abuse  of  art  for  didactic  uses,  is 
one  of  the  perennial  glories  of  English  literature. 

This  last  consideration  may  well  lead  to  a  final 
estimate  of  Tourgee's  place  in  that  literature.  Gen 
erally  speaking,  his  works  suffer,  as  most  Victorian 
literature  suffers,  because  of  their  dual  aim — artistic 
excellence  plus  doctrinal  inculcation.  More  particu 
larly,  he  stands  out  as  the  author  of  one  purpose  novel 
that,  principally  because  of  its  timeliness,  took  the 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  145 

country  by  storm.  The  burden  of  that  novel  he  later 
expressed  in  this  passage  taken  from  a  poem  of  his, 
which,  like  the  other  comparatively  few  rhymes  that 
he  fashioned,  has  all  the  vigor  of  his  prose: 

"Yet  up  from  the  Southland  comes  a  moan 
Like  Yesterday's  ceaseless  monotone. 
Hark!     Tis  the  half-freed  Slave's  lament 
For  the  bliss  we  promised  and  woe  we  sent! 
The  moan  of  the  fettered,  untaught  soul 
Charged  with  a  freeman's  power  and  dole !"  * 

His  literary  work  which  preceded  "A  Fool's 
Errand"  never  attained  popular  success,  though 
"Toinette"  is  with  little  doubt  the  first  piece  of  fiction 
dealing  directly  with  the  problem  of  Reconstruction; 
for  the  non-partisan  tales  of  Constance  Fenimore 
Woolson  which,  first  published  in  magazines  in  the 
seventies  and  eventually  appearing  in  book  form  as 
"Rodman  the  Keeper"  in  1880,  showed  the  utter  de 
pression,  the  yet  unquenched  bitterness,  and  the  pride, 
still  splendid  in  desolation,  of  the  South,  postdated  the 
appearance  of  "Toinette"  at  least  a  year.  But 
"Toinette,"  pioneer  in  a  literary  land  though  it  is,  and 
worthy  in  many  respects  of  comparison  with  Tourgee's 
better  known  writings,  never  caught  the  popular  fancy 
— perhaps  because  it  was  a  pioneer.  After  the  extraor 
dinary  success  of  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  Tourgee  be 
gan  to  experience  the  misfortune  that  second  or  third- 
rate  genius  must  always  suffer;  he  had  burnt  up  al- 
*Our  Continent,  Vol.  I,  p.  329. 


146  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

most  all  the  enthusiasm  he  had  in  this  first  great, 
consuming  effort,  and  spent  most  of  his  remaining 
life  in  a  vain  attempt  to  revive  the  ashes.  Or,  to' 
change  the  figure,  he  summarily  exhausted  his  one 
narrow  vein  of  literary  ore  in  "A  Fool's  Errand"  (or, 
more  generally,  in  the  six  Reconstruction  novels),  and 
occupied  the  rest  of  his  days  largely  in  working  and 
re-working  the  barren  material  that  was  still  left  in 
this  vein.  Continually  failing  in  this  attempt,  he  was 
at  the  same  time  forced  to  eke  out  his  decreasing  in 
come  with  efforts  to  strike  a  paying  vein  in  some  new 
literary  mine,  which  efforts  usually  proved  to  be  worth 
less.  The  first  mine  was  amply  large,  for  it  contained 
the  endless  ramifications  of  Southern  Romance, 
whence,  during  the  eighties,  much  valuable  ore  was 
exhumed  by  several  writers  of  greater  ability  than 
Tourgee;  but  unfortunately,  in  this  many-branched 
field,  he  saw  only  the  single  vein  of  partisan  interpreta 
tion  of  the  Southern  mind  and  character.  The  read 
ing  public,  however,  soon  tired  of  his  "political  docu 
ments"  ; 1  not  because  they  were  documents  only,  for 
they  were  more  than  that,  but  because  they  were  per 
vasively  political,  and  represented  an  attitude  that  both 
unimpassioned,  judicial  criticism  and  popular  interest 
could  not  long  tolerate. 

Judgment  of  a  writer  like  Tourgee,  as  of  much 
greater  writers  (Dickens,  for  instance)  whose  faults 
are  unusually  patent,  is  always  likely  to  err  on  the  side 
of  harshness.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  little  possibility 

*"A  History  of  American   Literature   Since   1870,"  by  Fred 
Lewis  Pattee,  Century  Co.,  New  York,  1915,  p.  318. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  147 

that  the  uniform  edition  of  his  works  which  he  so 
much  wanted  to  see  published  will  ever  appear.  Public 
concern  in  the  particularly  relevant  problems  of  his 
day  has  since  been  largely  shifted  to  more  immediate 
matters;  his  point  of  view  was  too  individual,  hence 
too  restricted,  to  cause  any  notable  imitations  of  the 
works,  though  he  was  unquestionably  instrumental  in 
stimulating  much  Northern  interest  in  the  South.  He 
neither  followed  nor  started  any  very  distinct  literary 
tradition ;  rather,  he  spent  his  strength  in  an  attempt 
to  alleviate  a  social  ill  which  could  not  be  cured  by  any 
such  ineffectual  palliative  as  the  bigotry  which  results 
from  clannish  instincts,  lack  of  well-balanced  judg 
ment,  myopic  political  vision,  and  a  sense  of  personal 
wrongs.  Never  did  the  spectator's  attitude  toward  life 
attract  him ;  he  was  not  interested  in  the  enchantment 
which  the  flux  of  things  has  afforded  to  some  rare  and 
precious  writers ;  he  was  interested  in  the  things  them 
selves,  and  in  only  a  restricted  portion  of  them  at  that. 
To  be  in  the  world,  yet  not  of  it,  was  not  for  him.  He 
hated  with  perfect  hatred  anything  that  savored  of 
dandyism  or  of  a  dilettante  attitude  toward  life,  and 
attacked  it  with  unrelenting  acerbity.  There  was  no 
neutrality  for  Tourgee ;  a  belief,  a  political  policy,  an 
institution,  must  be  either  cold  or  hot,  else  it  received 
from  his  pen  a  doom  similar  to  that  which  was  meted 
out  to  the  church  at  Laodicea ;  and  he  often  doomed  it 
anyhow  because,  even  though  unneutral,  it  was  too 
cold  or  too  hot.  And  yet  out  of  such  qualities  as  these 
comes  his  chief  virtue:  he  exemplified  in  his  writings 
the  magnificent,  whether  credible  or  not,  folk-lore 


148  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

tradition  that,  in  this  universe  of  good  and  evil,  of  light 
and  darkness,  of  justice  and  injustice,  of  love  and  hate, 
of  God  and  the  Devil,  the  positive  quality  of  good  is 
not  only  destined  to  win  an  eventual  victory  over  the 
negative  quality  of  evil  in  a  future  world,  but  that  it 
often  wins  it  here  and  now.  Hence  heroism  almost  in 
variably  sweeps  on  to  triumphant  victory  in  Tourgee's 
novels,  while  villainy  is  .punished  with  no  less  regular 
uniformity,  as  is  demanded  by  the  mores  out  of  which 
come  the  ideas  of  popular  literature.  It  was  his  mis 
fortune  that  his  particular  interpretation  of  these 
eternally  opposed  principles  did  not  happen  to  be 
adequate  for  the  settlement  of  the  questions  of  Re 
construction,  especially  in  regard  to  the  black  race. 
Settlement  of  this  special  matter  is  still  problematic, 
while  the  general  question  has  now  become  world 
wide;  and  the  words  concerning  Comfort  Servosse, 
with  which  Tourgee  concluded  the  next  but  last 
chapter  of  his  greatest  novel,  may  now,  with  but  slight 
textual  change,  be  aptly  applied  to  himself:  "Time 
smiles  grimly  as  he  traces  anew  the  unsolved  problem 
which  mocked  the  Fool's  heart." 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  TOURGEE'S  PUBLISHED 
WRITINGS,  AND  PERIODICALS  EDITED 
BY  HIM 

1867  The  Union  Register,  weekly  newspaper.  Greens 

boro,  January  3-June  14. 

1868  "The  Code  of  Civil  Procedure,  to  Special  Plead 

ings."  Prepared  by  Victor  C.  Barringer, 
Will  B.  Rodman,  Albion  W.  Tourgee,  Com 
missioners  of  the  Code.  Raleigh. 

1874  "Toinette:    a    Novel."      New    York.       [New 
edition,  1875;  revised  edition,  1879.] 

1878  "The  Code  of  Civil  Procedure  of  North  Caro 
lina  with  Notes  and  Decisions."    Raleigh. 

•1879  "A  Digest  of  Cited  Cases  in  the  North  Carolina 

Reports."    Raleigh. 
"Figs  and  Thistles.     A  Western  Story."    New 

York.     [New  edition,  1883.] 
"A  Fool's  Errand,  by  One  of  the  Fools."    New 
York.      [Printings:  November   (2),  Decem 
ber    (2) ;   1880,  January,   February,  March, 
April,    May    (2),    June    (2),    August    (2), 
September,  October,  November  (2),  Decem 
ber   (4).     New  edition  with  "The  Invisible 
Empire,"  1880,  1883,  1902.] 
149 


150  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

1880  "The  Invisible  Empire."     New  York. 
"Bricks  without  Straw."    New  York.     [Several 

reprints  on  unknown  dates.] 

1881  "A  Royal  Gentleman"    ["Toinette"   renamed] 

and  "Zouri's  Christmas."  New  York.  [Sec 
ond  edition,  1884.] 

"Aaron's  Rod  in  Politics."  N.  A.  Review, 
February,  pp.  139-162. 

"Reform  versus  Reformation."  N.  A.  Review, 
April,  pp.  305-319. 

"The  Christian  Citizen."  The  Chautauquan, 
November,  pp.  86-91  v 

1882  "John  Eax  and  Mamelon,  or  The  South  without 

the  Shadow."    New  York. 
Our  Continent,  weekly  magazine,  Philadelphia, 
New  York,   February   15,    1882 -August  20, 
1884. 

1883  "Hot  Plowshares."     New  York.     [Our  Conti- 

nent,  July,  i882-May,  1883.] 

1884  "An  Appeal  to  Caesar."    New  York. 

1885  "A  Man  of  Destiny."    Chicago.     [Inter-Ocean, 

December,  i884-March,  1885.] 
"Letters  to  a  Mugwump."    Inter-Ocean,  Septem 
ber-November. 

1886  "The  Veteran  and  His  Pipe."    Chicago.     [New 

edition,  1903.  Inter-Ocean,  April-September.] 
"A  Child  of  Luck."     Inter-Ocean,  March-No 
vember. 

"Study  in  Civilization."  N.  A.  Review,  Septem 
ber,  pp.  246-261. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  151 

1887  "Black  Ice."    New  York. 

"Button's  Inn."    Boston.     [New  edition,  1897. 

Chautauquan  Book  Store,  1908.] 
"The  Renaissance  of  Nationalism."    N.  A.  Re- 

view,  January,  p.  i-n. 

1888  "Eighty  Nine."     ["89"]     New  York. 
"Letters  to  a  King."    Cincinnati. 

"A  Bystander's  Notes."  Inter-Ocean,  May, 
1888  (with  occasional  lapses)  to  January, 
1895;  August,  i897-September,  1898. 

"The  South  as  a  Field  for  Fiction."  Forum, 
December,  pp.  404-413. 

1889  New  uniform  edition  of :  "Black  Ice,"  "Bricks 

without  Straw,"  "Figs  and  Thistles,"  "A 
Fool's  Errand,"  "Hot  Plowshares,"  "John 
Eax,"  "A  Royal  Gentleman."  New  York. 

"With  Gauge  and  Swallow,  Attorneys."  Phila 
delphia.  [Lippincott's  Monthly  Magazine, 
December,  1887- August,  1889.] 

"Shall  White  Minorities  Rule?"   Forum,  April 

PP-  143-155. 

1890  "Pactolus  Prime."     New  York. 

"Murvale  Eastman,  Christian  Socialist."  New 
York.  [New  edition,  1892.  The  Advance, 
Chicago,  vol.  XXXII.] 

"The  Right  to  Vote."    Forum,  March,  pp.  78-92. 

1891  "John  Workman's  Notions."    Inter-Ocean,  July- 

May,  1892. 

1892  "A  Son  of  Old  Harry."    New  York. 


152  ALBION  W.  TOURGEE 

1893  "Out  of  the  Sunset  Sea."    New  York. 

"The  Anti-Trust  Campaign."  N.  A.  Review, 
July,  pp.  30-40. 

1894  "An  Outing  with  the  Queen  of  Hearts."    New 

York.  [Cosmopolitan,  November,  .1891,  pp. 
70-84.] 

"A  Man  of  Destiny."  [Second  series.]  Inter- 
Ocean,  January- April. 

1895  The  Basis.    Weekly,  March-December;  monthly, 

December- April,  1896.    Buffalo. 

1896  "The  Story  of  a  Thousand."     Buffalo.     [Cos 

mopolitan  (in  part),  November,  1894- April, 
1895;  completed  in  The  Basis.] 

"The  War  of  the  Standards."    New  York. 

"The  Mortgage  on  the  Hip-Roof  House." 
Cincinnati. 

"The  Reversal  of  Malthus,"  Am.  Jr.  of 
Sociology,  July,  pp.  13-24. 

"An  Astral  Partner."  The  Green  Bag,  July- 
August 

"Some  Advice  to  Young  Voters."  TJie  Golden 
Rule,  October  I,  pp.  4-5. 

1898  "The    Man    Who    Outlived    Himself."     New 

York. 

1899  "A  Quiet  Corner  in  Europe."     Independent, 

June  I,  pp.  1483-1485. 

"The  Twentieth  Century  Peace-Makers."   Con- 
temp.  Review,  London,  June,  pp.  886-908. 
1901  "The    Summerdale    Brabble."     The    National 
Tribune,  Washington,  March-April. 


ALBION  W.  TOURGEE  153 

1902  "Our  Consular  System."    Independent,  January 
23,  pp.  208-210. 

Two  foreign  translations  of  "A  Fool's  Errand"  have 
been  found:  "Ernes  Narren  Narrenstreich,"  by  E. 
Pennet,  Berlin,  1882,  3  vols.;  "Hullum  Hritys,"  by 
Waldemar  Churberg,  Helsingissa,  1883,  2  vols. 


INDEX 


Abbott,  General  Joseph,  69 

Alger,  Horatio,  122 

Anderson,  President  M.  B.,  20.  23,  63 

"Ann  Veronica,"   140 

"Appeal  to  Caesar,  An,"  78,  94-6,  in 

Arena,  70 

Arnold,  Benedict,  12 

Auerbach,  Berthold,  137 

Bacon,  Lord,  16 

Basis,  The,  120-1 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  109 

Bennett,  James  Gordon,  89 

"Black  Ice,"  101-4,  105,  no,  135 

Blaine,  James  G.,  85,  98 

Booknian,  69 

"Bricks  without  Straw,"  6l,  73-76,  9$ 

Broughton,  Rhoda,  139 

Brown,  John,  88 

Buffalo  Express,  The,  62,  128-9 

"Button's  Inn,"   104-6,   136 

Byron,  Lord,  17 

"C"  letters,  57-8,  97 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  27,  137-8 

Cervantes,  27 

Chace,  Dr.  Wm.,  102 

Chautauquan,  The,  26 

"Child  of  Luck,  A,"  100-1 

Choate,  Joseph  H.,  81 

Cicero,  22 

Cleveland,  Grover,  96-9,  loo-i,  107,  119 

"Code  of  Civil  Procedure,  The,     57 

"Comfdie  Humaine,"  23 

Conkling,  Roscoe,  98 

"Correspondence  of  Jonathan  Worth,  The,"  39 

155 


156  -  INDEX 

Darwin,  Charles,  140 
D'Aubigne,  16 
Davis,  Jefferson,  38 
Davis,  Robert,  84,  88 
Denver  Times,  The,  73 
Dial,  75 

Dickens,  Charles,   135,  146 
"Digest  of  Cited  Cases,  A,"  57 
Diogenes,  101 

"Eighty-Nine,"  106-8 
Eliot,  George,  135 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  137 
Erie  Dispatch,  TJu>,  31 

"Figs  and  Thistles."  59,  61,  71-2,  74 

"Fool's  Errand,  A/'  59-70,  71,  73,  74,  76,  78,  79,  80,  81,  95,  145, 

146,  148  ' 

Froude,  James  A.,  137 

Garfield,  James  A.,  72,  76-8,  95 

Grant,  Ulysses  S.,  52,  68,  81,  90,  98,  99 

Hardy,  Thomas,  116,  138-9 

Harper's  Magazine,  68 

Henry,  O.,  52 

Heywood,  Chester  W.,  17 

"History  of  American  Literature,  A,"  146 

"History  of  the  United  States,"  33 

Holden,  Governor,  45 

"Hot  Plowshares,"  61,  86-8 

Ho\vells,  William  Dean,  138 

Hugo,  Victor,  68 

Hunt,  Leigh,  56 

Inter-Ocean,  The  Chicago,  27,  77,  97,  99,  100,  108,  109,  no,  115, 

116,  119,   125,  142 
"Invisible  Empire,  The,"  70-1 

James,  Henry,  138 

Jay,  John,  81 

"John  Eax,"  54-5,  61,  88 

"John  Workman's  Notions,"  115 

Johnson,  Andrew,  35,  38 

•Kilbourne,  Harmon,  18 
Kilbourne,  Mary  Corwin,  18 


INDEX  157 

Kingsley,  Charles,  113 

Kirk,  Edmund,  69 

Ku  Klux  Klan,  43-5,  57.  63,  64,  70,  75,  79,  107 

Kuhn,  Seneca,  34-5 

"Letters  of  Junius,"  58 
"Letters  to  a  King,"  108,  138 
"Letters  to  a  Mugwump,"  99-100 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  50,  88,  99 
Lincoln,  Robert,  85 
Lippincott's  Monthly  Magazine,  no. 
Logan,  John  A.,  109 
Longfellow,  Henry  W.,  134 

Macaulay,  Thomas  B.,  16 

Mackaye,  Steele,  78-9 

McKinley,  William,  122-3 

"Mamelon,"  54,  55-6 

"Man  of  Destiny,  A,"  97-8,  101,  no 

"Man  Who  Outlived  Himself,  The,"  124-5 

Mayzrilte  Sentinel,  82 

Mendenhall,  C.   P.,  32 

Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  85 

Morgan,  General  J.  H.,  25 

"Mortgage  on  the  Hip-Roof  House,  The,"  122 

"Murvale  Eastman,  Christian  Socialist,"  113-4,  120,  J3O,  137,  *4<> 

Nation,  96 

National  Tribune,  127 

New  York  Tribune,  38,  59,  60,  67,  68,  69,  80 

"Night  Thoughts,"  16 

Nixon,  William  Penn,  97,  99,  "6 

North  State,  Thef  57 

Our  Continent?™*  84-91^95,  1°°,  IO4»  i°8.  I2I»  *33,  '34,  135. 

137,  138,  139,  140,  145 

"Out  of  the  Sunset  Sea,"  117-8,  119  M     0        . 
"Outing  with  the  Queen  of  Hearts,  An,    118-9,130-7,  T39 

"Pactolus  Prime,"  111-2 
"Paradise  Lost,"  16 
Pettingill,  R.  L.,  34 
"Pilgrim's  Progress,"  16 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  125 


158  INDEX 

Raleigh  Observer,  The,  68 

Reade,  Charles,  133 

"Reconstruction  in  North  Carolina,"  33,  40 

"Reconstruction  Political  and  Social,"  33,  35,  65 

Richardson,  Samuel,  63 

Robbins,  Rebecka,  12 

"Robinson  Crusoe,"  46 

Roe,  Edward  P.,  112,  134 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  126,  128 

"Royal  Gentleman,  A,"  48,  61,  74 

Royal,  Wm.  L.,  79-81 

Ruskin,  John,  115,  135 

"Scottish  Chiefs,"  16 

Shakspere,  William,  19 

Snow,  Rowena,  13,  14 

"Son  of  Old  Harry,  A,"  116-7,  141 

"Story  of  a  Thousand,"  25,  28,  29,  130 

Stowe,   Harriet   Beecher,  63,  64,  68,  69,  70,  85 

"Summerdale  Brabble,  The,"   127-8 

"Toinette ,"  41,  48-51,  145 

Tolstoi,  Count  Leo,  139-40 

Tourgee,  Aimee,  44,  118,  121,  124,  130,  143 

Tourgee,  Albion  Winegar,  ancestors,  12;  father  and  mother, 
12-3;  their  marriage  and  removal  to  Ohio,  13;  birth,  13; 
mother's  death,  13;  stepmother,  13-4;  trip  to  Massachu 
setts,  14;  youthful  diversions,  14-5;  reading,  15-6;  return 
to  Ohio,  16;  academy  life,  16-7;  early  writings,  17;  meets 
future  wife,  17-8;  college  life,  19-21;  enlists  in  army,  21; 
severely  wounded,  21;  slow  recovery,  22;  first  book  pub 
lished,  22-4;  second  enlistment,  25;  first  interest  in  negro, 
25-6;  prisoner  of  war,  26-7;  marriage,  27;  return  to  war, 
28;  army  diary,  28;  "The  Story  of  a  Thousand,"  28-9;  in 
dependence  of  character,  leading  to  withdrawal  from  army, 
29-30;  admitted  to  bar,  31;  removes  to  Greensboro,  32;  at 
titude  toward  South,  33-4;  business  partnerships,  34;  fail 
ure  of  nursery,  35;  imprudent  actions,  35-6;  The  Union 
Register,  36-8;  hatred  of  Governor  Worth,  39;  elected 
judge,  40;  plays  important  part  in  Constitutional  Conven 
tion,  40-1 ;  more  imprudence,  41-2 ;  experiences  with  Ku 
Klux  Klan,  43-5;  failure  of  another  business  enterprise, 
45-47J  fragmentary  ^  literary  labors,  47;  first  novel, 
"Toinette,"  48-51;  duties  as  judge,  51;  removes  to  Raleigh, 
52;  "John  Eax"  and  "Mamelon,"  53-6;  lectures,  56;  writ 
ings  on  legal  matters,  56-7;  "C"  letters,  57-8;  leaves  South 


INDEX  159 

and  goes  to  New  York,  58;  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  59-70;  how 
written,  60-1 ;  one  of  series  of  works,  61-2;  story  told  "in 
"A  Fool's  Errand,"  62-4;  its  message,  64-7;  its  immediate 
popularity,  67-9;  later  critical  opinions,  69-70;  "The  Invis 
ible  Empire,"  70-1;  "Figs  and  Thistles,"  71-2;  settles  in 
Denver,  72-3;  returns  to  New  York,  73;  "Bricks  withput 
Straw,"  73-6;  campaigns  for  Garfield,  76-7;  Garfield  seeks 
his  advice,  77-8;  dramatises  "A  Fool's  Errand,"  78^9;  "A 
Fool's  Errand"  attacked,  79-81 ;  public  dinner  for  him,  81 ; 
purchases  Thorheim,  81-2;  makes  home  there,  82-3;  goes 
to  Philadelphia,  84;  Our  Continent,  84-91;  "Hot  Plow 
shares"  published  in  Our  Continent,  86-8;  troubles  as  ed 
itor  and  publisher,  88-9;  magazine  fails,  89-91;  life  at 
Thorheim,  92-123;  waning  literary  powers,  92;  character 
as  shown  in  wife's  diary,  92-4;  "An  Appeal  to  Caesar," 
94-6;  attacks  on  Cleveland,  97-9;  "A  Man  of  Destiny,"  97-8; 
"The  Veteran  and  His  Pipe,"  99;  "Letters  to  a  Mugwump/' 
09-100;  "A  Child  of  Luck,"  100-1 ;  "Black  Ice,"  101-4;  "But 
ton's  Inn,"  104-6;  activities  as  inventor,  106;  "Eighty-Nine," 
106-8;  "Letters  to  a  King,"  108;  material  contributed  to 
Inter-Ocean,  108-10;  "With  Gauge  and  Swallow,  Attorneys," 
no;  advocates  educational  measure,  no-i;  "Pactolus 
Prime,"  111-2;  "Murvale  Eastman,"  113-4;  lectures  at  Buf 
falo  Law  School,  114-5;  "John  Workman's  Notions,"  115; 
denounced  for  prophecy  of  negro  insurrection,  116;  "A  Son 
of  Old  Harry,"  116-7;  "Out  of  the  Sunset  Sea,"  117-8;  "An 
Outing  with  the  Queen  of  Hearts,"  118-9;  various  troubles, 
119-20;  The  Basis,  120-1;  "The  War  of  the  Standards," 
121-2;  "The  Mortgage  on  the  Hip-Roof  House,"  122;  des 
perate  financial  situation,  122;  appointed  consul,  122-3; 
goes  to  Bordeaux,  124;  "The  Man  Who  Outlived  Himself," 
124-5;  trouble  with  French  bailiff,  125-6;  failing  health, 
126;  abandons  his  educational  theory  for  solving  problem 
of  Reconstruction,  126-7;  "The  Summerdale  Brabble,"  127-8; 
threatened  with  removal  to  Halifax,  128-9;  final  illness,  129- 
30;  death,  139;  personal  appearance,  130-1;  critical  esti 
mate  of  his  character  and  writings,  132-48;  limited  liter 
ary  ability,  132-3;  views  on  contemporaries,  133-40;  typical 
Victorian,  133-5;  hatred  of  realistic  fiction,  135-40;  despises 
Carlyle,  137-8;  jealous  of  Howells  and  James,  138;  abhor 
rence  of  Hardy  and  Tolstoi,  138-40;  attitude  toward  sci 
ence,  140-1;  narrow  point  of  view,  1.41-2;  too  manyjnter- 
ests,  142-3;  attitude  toward  work,  143-4 ;  his  place  in  lit 
erature,  144-8 

Tourgee,  Cyrus,  13 

Tourgee,  Mrs.  Emma  Kilbourne,  18,  22,  27,  28,  60,  61,  63,  73, 
82,  88,89,  90,  92-4,  101-2,  in,  113,  n8,  119, 122, 123, 128, 129, 130 


160  INDEX 

Tourgee,  Peter,  12 

Tourgee,  Valentine,  12 

Tourgee,  Valentine  Jr.,  12,  13,  14,  IS,  16,  24,  87 

.Trollope,  Anthony,  133 

Turgenev,  Ivan,  139 

Union  Register,  The,  36-8 
"Veteran  and  His  Pipe,  The,"  99 

''War  of  the  Standards,  The,"  121-2 

Warner,  Joseph,  78 

Warner,  Mrs.  Joseph,  78 

Washington,  Booker  T.,  126 

Winegar,  Jack,  13 

Winegar,  Jacob,  12 

Winegar,  Jacob  Jr.,  13,  14 

Winegar,  Louisa  Emma,  12,  13 

Winegar,  Ulric,  12 

"With  Gauge  and  Swallow,  Attorneys,"  no 

Woolson,   Constance   Fenimore,    145 

Worth,  Governor  Jonathan,  39,  42 

Zola,  Emile,  138 


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